"Back! back!" she cried. "Air! air! and water! My lord! My dear lord!"

But he did not answer, or even stir, though she bent close to him and
thrust her hand within his breast. And then the frightened guests beheld
a strange but beautiful and loving thing, such as might have moved any
heart to tenderness and wonder. This great beauty, this worshipped
creature, put her arms beneath and about the helpless, awful body--for so
its pallor and stillness indeed made it--and lifted it in their powerful
whiteness as if it had been the body of a child, and so bore it to a
couch near and laid it down, kneeling beside it.

Anne and Osmonde were beside her. Osmonde pale himself, but gently calm
and strong. He had despatched for a physician the instant he saw the
fall.

"My lady," he said, bending over her, "permit me to approach. I have
some knowledge of these seizures. Your pardon!"

He knelt also and took the moveless hand, feeling the pulse; he, too,
thrust his hand within the breast and held it there, looking at the
sunken face.

"My dear lord," her ladyship was saying, as if to the prostrate man's ear
alone, knowing that her tender voice must reach him if aught would--as
indeed was truth. "Edward! My dear--dear lord!"

Osmonde held his hand steadily over the heart. The guests shrunk back,
stricken with terror.