“Pass the English lady!”
The operation proceeded. The voice of the sentinel at the next post was heard more faintly, in its turn: “Pass the English lady!”
The operation ended. Ignatius Wetzel held up his hand for silence and put his ear close to the patient’s mouth.
The first trembling breath of returning life fluttered over Grace Roseberry’s lips and touched the old man’s wrinkled cheek. “Aha!” he cried. “Good girl! you breathe—you live!” As he spoke, the voice of the sentinel at the final limit of the German lines (barely audible in the distance) gave the word for the last time:
“Pass the English lady!”
SECOND SCENE.—Mablethorpe House.
PREAMBLE.
THE place is England.
The time is winter, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy.