The housekeeper ran in. She knelt by her master’s body. With one hand she loosened his cravat. With the other she pointed to the end of the table.
Mrs. Zant still kept her place; but there was another change. Little by little, her eyes recovered their natural living expression—then slowly closed. She tottered backward from the table, and lifted her hands wildly, as if to grasp at something which might support her. Mr. Rayburn hurried to her before she fell—lifted her in his arms—and carried her out of the room.
One of the servants met them in the hall. He sent her for a carriage. In a quarter of an hour more, Mrs. Zant was safe under his care at the hotel.
XIII.
THAT night a note, written by the housekeeper, was delivered to Mrs. Zant.
“The doctors give little hope. The paralytic stroke is spreading upward to his face. If death spares him, he will live a helpless man. I shall take care of him to the last. As for you—forget him.”
Mrs. Zant gave the note to Mr. Rayburn.
“Read it, and destroy it,” she said. “It is written in ignorance of the terrible truth.”
He obeyed—and looked at her in silence, waiting to hear more. She hid her face. The few words she had addressed to him, after a struggle with herself, fell slowly and reluctantly from her lips.
She said: “No mortal hand held the hands of John Zant. The guardian spirit was with me. The promised protection was with me. I know it. I wish to know no more.”