* *

When I looked up again, I saw, standing against the light in the door
opposite, at the head of the steps, the woman that had played the Queen
with that mock-blood still on her arm and breast.

CHAPTER VII

"Mr. Mallock," said the page, "the King is heartily sorry, and wishes to
tell you so himself."

I said nothing.

Of all that happened, after Dolly's death in the theatre-yard, I think
now as of a kind of dream, though it changed my whole life and has made
me what I am. I have, too, scarcely the heart to write of it; and what I
say of it now is gathered partly from what I can remember and partly
from what other folks told me.

It must have been a terrible sight that they all saw as they ran in from
the lane, my man James first among them all. There lay, bloodying all
the ice about him, the fellow whom I had run through the throat, as dead
as the rat he was, but still jerking blood from beneath his ear; and
there in my arms, as I kneeled on the stones, lay Dolly, her head fallen
back and out of her hood, as white as a lily, dead too in an instant,
for she was stabbed through her heart, with her life-blood in a great
smear down her side, and all over my hands and clothes.

My man James proved again as faithful a friend as he had always been to
me; for the affair had been no fault of his: I had sent him for the
coach, and he was bringing it up to the yard-entrance from the lane, as
Anne had run out screaming. Then he had run in, and my other man with
him, and the crowd after him, in time to see the two living assassins
make off into the dark entrance on the other side. A number had run
after them, but to no purpose, for we never heard of them again; and my
Dolly's murderer, I suppose, is still breathing God's air, unless he has
been hanged long ago for some other crime.

The next matter was to get us home again; for James has told me that I
would allow no one to touch either her or me, until a physician came
out of the crowd and told me the truth. Then I had gathered her up in my
arms like a child without a word to any; and went out, the crowd falling
back as I came, to where the coach waited in Little Russell Street.
Still carrying her I went into the coach, and would allow no one else
within; and so we drove back to Covent Garden.

When we came there a part of the crowd had already run on before and was
waiting. When the coach drew up, I came out of the coach, with my dear
love still