The servants, with hushed, terrified voices, were searching the rooms on the ground floor. She could hear Miss Oliver speaking.
Their footsteps sounded on the big, tiled hall outside the door. What if Adolphe were captured leaving the premises?
She held her breath. All her self-possession was required now, for she also recognised Bracondale’s voice. He had returned!
Was silence judicious in those circumstances? She decided it was not. Therefore she gave vent to a loud scream—a scream which told them where she was.
In a moment they all burst into the room—Bracondale in his evening clothes, Miss Oliver in her dressing-gown, and the two footmen, who had hastily dressed, one of them without his coat.
The servants, seeing a man lying upon the carpet, halted upon the threshold, but Bracondale dashed forward to his wife, who stood with her hands to her brow in frantic terror. She was, he saw, on the verge of fainting. Therefore he took her in his arms and hastily inquired what had occurred.
“He’s dead—I believe!” gasped one of the footmen, in French.
“Jean! What has happened?” Bracondale demanded, in amazement. “Tell me, dearest.”
But she was too agitated to speak. She only clung to him and, burying her face upon his shoulder, sobbed hysterically, while Miss Oliver rushed away for a smelling-bottle.
“Who is this man?” Bracondale asked in a hard voice. “What is the matter? The servants heard a shot just after I came in. They came to me in the study—but I had heard nothing.”