But Mme. de Vigny had not quite lost her wits, or her capacity for self-defense, though the pain in her head was intense, and the blood was still flowing freely. She managed, without his remarking it, to crawl from the sofa to the door, and then suddenly, before he had time to stop her, she jumped up, opened it, passed rapidly out, closed it, and locked him in.
Having done this, she could do no more, but fell in a dead faint on the mat.
Meantime, “cabined, cribbed, confined,” Lord Francis was indeed “kept like a tiger in too small a cage.”
She had thought him mad, and in truth it almost seemed as if she were right. He thumped at the door till the echoes in the house rang again, still no one came; the servants were all very far away, and were, moreover, amusing themselves with a game of poker, which was engrossing them far more at that moment than their mistress’s visitors and quarrels. Not successful with the door, Lord Francis tried the window, but it was at least sixty feet from the ground—the jump was certain death—then he fell to smashing sundry bits of bric-a-brac that fell in his way—more to annoy Lucille than because he did not know what he was doing; and finally he rang the bell.
The bell brought Lucille’s maid, but she did not open the door, though he loudly demanded that it should be unlocked.
The maid found her mistress faint and bleeding on the landing; it was scarcely likely she would open the door till she had tended her, especially as there was no cessation of the smashing inside.
Lucille was recovering her senses when the maid arrived, and thus by the help of an arm crawled into her own room, which was not very far distant. The first sentence she managed to pronounce was:
“Do not let him out, he is mad. Poor man, he has a dreadful wife who has driven him mad. Set someone to watch the door in case he should force it, and send for Dr. Walton.”
It was not for herself that Mme. de Vigny desired the presence of Dr. Walton, for she washed her face, and put some plaster on the wound, which, after all, was not a very serious one, and she was a good deal revived by the time the doctor arrived.
Dr. Walton was a personal friend of Mme. de Vigny, that is she had made a friend of him since she had come to New York. She had a wonderful facility for fascinating the male sex and annexing their services, and she felt very certain she could depend on Dr. Walton, or she would not have sent for him.