apparition, startling in the
extreme, pushed violently past him and into the room. It was a girl's
figure, hatless, bedraggled, mudstained, her hair wild and drenched
with rain, her eyes staring strangely, while one lividly pale cheek was
defaced by a long smear of blood. Her breath came in gasps, laboured,
terrible to hear, as though her heart threatened to burst its walls.
She cast one swift, penetrating glance at the three occupants of the
room, then a sort of hoarse scream came from her lips.

"Roger----!"

Almost speechless with incredulity, Roger leapt to his feet.

"Esther! You--where have you come from?"

"Roger! Roger!" came the odd, croaking voice again. "Stop him--don't
let him touch you--for God's sake don't let him touch your hand!"

Utterly astonished, the sickening suspicion rushed upon him that the
doctor was right. She was in the grip of some dreadful delusion. At
the same moment he was poignantly aware of her slenderness and
fragility, the trembling of her hands. He reached her side, put out
his hand to her to find her still staring at him, wild-eyed, panting
for breath.

"Don't touch that bandage, he wants to kill you. He killed your
father, he and Lady Clifford between them, now he's trying to get you,
too. Oh, oh! thank God I reached you in time!"

Something seemed to snap, she wavered an instant like a drunken person,
then all at once crumpled into a heap on the floor, where she lay
shivering and sobbing.

CHAPTER XXXII

For a full second all the onlookers merely gazed, completely
dumbfounded. Miss Clifford seemed unable to make a move, the doctor
stood rooted to the spot by the table, his face expressionless, his
fingers holding the long strip of gauze, which fluttered in the draught
from the open door. The first to stir was Roger, who knelt beside the
sobbing girl, and putting his arms around her body tried to lift her a
little. The startling denunciation she had given voice to had hardly
registered upon his brain, meaning to him only a confirmation of the
deplorable truth which Sartorius had foreseen. She was, almost without
doubt, unhinged: her whole appearance and manner went to prove it. In
an agony of mind Roger took in the details of her sodden clothing, her
wet, tangled hair, her dreadful pallor. His imagination flashed a
swift vision of the poor girl wandering alone in the streets of Cannes
for two days and nights. What was this terrible idea that obsesse