Hour after hour Aribert sat silent by his nephew's
bed-side, attending mechanically to his wants, and every now and
then gazing hard into the vacant, anguished face, as if trying to
extort from that mask the secrets which it held. Aribert was
tortured by the idea that if he could have only half an hour's, only a
quarter of an hour's, rational speech with Prince Eugen, all might
be cleared up and put right, and by the fact that that rational talk
was absolutely impossible on Eugen's part until the fever had run
its course. As the minutes crept on to midnight the watcher, made
nervous by the intense, electrical atmosphere which seems always
to surround a person who is dangerously ill, grew more and more a
prey to vague and terrible apprehensions. His mind dwelt
hysterically on the most fatal possibilities.
He wondered what would occur if by any ill-chance Eugen should
die in that bed - how he would explain the affair to Posen and to
the Emperor, how he would justify himself. He saw himself being
tried for murder, sentenced (him - a Prince of the blood!), led to
the scaffold . . . a scene unparalleled in Europe for over a century!
. . . Then he gazed anew at the sick man, and thought he saw death
in every drawn feature of that agonized face. He could have
screamed aloud. His ears heard a peculiar resonant boom. He
started - it was nothing but the city clock striking twelve.
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