“Good God, man, is she killed?” exclaimed the other leaning over and attempting to raise the recumbent body at his feet.
Blood was flowing from a gash cut in the woman’s head by the sharp edge of the stair. The two men picked her up and carried her into the tap-room, where they placed her in one of the widest chairs. The tapster recognized her as the lady who had arrived there a few days previously with the Count, and looked suspiciously at the actor; but, without asking any questions of the latter, he began bathing her face in cold water and binding a cloth around her head to stop the flow of blood. Its current darkly streaked the mass of golden hair which, having been liberated from the confinement of the hood, fell disheveled around the high white ruff, in which the lower part of her face was concealed, and upon the puffed shoulders terminating the tight, slashed sleeves of vari-colored silk. Her hooded cape of showy fabric lay upon the floor. Her full gown of blue silk with front embroidered from the collar down the long pointed doublet and dress front, comfortably filled the chair. The lamps directly overhead had been extinguished, and it was the light from the still blazing candles at the angle of the chimney that flared upon her pallid face.
Several minutes had passed and all attempts at her restoration had been unavailing. A serious expression had gathered on the face of the tapster, and the actor looked to have been shaken into sobriety. Suddenly the two men heard light footsteps in the hallway. The door had been left open. They looked toward it, and at that moment the figure of a man passed across the seam of light and was immediately swallowed by the darkness that lay on the further edge. As the light struck him he had looked towards its source, but if he recognized any member of the group or realized the character of the scene which he had momentarily disturbed, it did not cause him to pause. The sound of the closing of the door into the inn-yard immediately afterwards echoed through the hall.
“That was her husband, the Count,” whispered the actor, looking with amazement at his companion.
“You are wrong. It was Marlowe,” remarked the tapster.
“Nay,” said the actor, “Marlowe was not so attired. It is her husband. You had better follow him with word of her condition.”
“If I thought you were right,” returned the tapster with considerable feeling, “I would not stir a step, for I am not anxious to serve the ruffian. The blow he felled me with was none to my liking. I would do anything for the lady, but what she needs is what he is now doing. We will stop him, whoever he is, as he returns.”
A PRECARIOUS EXISTENCE.
Might first made kings, and laws were then most sure
When like the Draco’s they were writ in blood.
—Jew of Malta, i, 1.