One of the sentinels from the terrace stood at the upper end of the
room, gesticulating and shouting something.

And all the world had changed. A kind of throbbing. She couldn't
understand. It was as if all the water-pipes and concealed machinery and
cables of the ways beneath, were beating--as pulses beat. And about her
blew something like a wind--a wind that was dismay.

Her eyes went to the face of the Marshal as a frightened child might
look towards its mother.

He was still serene. He was frowning slightly, she thought, but that
was natural enough, for the Earl of Delhi, with one hand gauntly
gesticulating, had taken him by the arm and was all too manifestly
disposed to drag him towards the great door that opened on the terrace.
And Viard was hurrying towards the huge windows and doing so in the
strangest of attitudes, bent forward and with eyes upturned.

Something up there?

And then it was as if thunder broke overhead.

The sound struck her like a blow. She crouched together against the
masonry and looked up. She saw three black shapes swooping down through
the torn clouds, and from a point a little below two of them, there had
already started curling trails of red....

Everything else in her being was paralysed, she hung through moments
that seemed infinities, watching those red missiles whirl down towards