Your hand--
let down your hand to me. I can reach it from the parapet here--with
my fingers only, not with my lips, though even that you never forbade!"
Weakly, she lowered her arm over the sill. He reached to touch it, and
she leaned her face towards his--hers in shadow, his pale in the
moonlight.
Before their fingers met, a yellow flame leapt from the angle to the
left; a loud report banged in her ears and echoed across the park; and
Raoul, after swaying a second, pitched forward with a sharp cry and
rolled to the foot of the glacis.
Dorothea forced herself back in the room, and stood there upright and
shook, with Polly beside her holding her two hands.
"They have shot him!"
The two women listened for a moment. All was still now. Polly stepped
to the window and, closed it softly.
"But why? What are you doing?" Dorothea asked, in a hoarse whisper.
"They will find quite enough without that," said the practical girl,
but her voice quavered.
"Yet if they had seen--Ah, how selfish to think of that now! Hush--
that was a groan! He is alive still."
She moved towards the window, but Polly dragged her back by main force.
"Listen, Miss!"
Below they heard the sudden unbarring of doors, and Endymion's voice
calling for Mudge, the butler. A bell pealed in the servants' hall,
stopped, and began ringing again in short and violent jerks.
"Let me go," commanded Dorothea.
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