The strangled tones of the medical student made Tatiana, who was leaning over the balcony of her room looking at the crescent moon, start with a sudden uncontrollable dread. “What is it?” she cried in a shaking voice. “Come down, come down, quick!” Her hair already unbound for the night and falling below her knees, her peignoir fluttering like wings behind her, Tatiana joined him on the terrace. “My God,” she whispered, “you look like a ghost!” The young man tried to speak, gulped, tried again, and failed. He was shaking like a leaf as he pointed to the lighted windows of Preston’s room. She needed now no explanation, and her little feet in their velvet mules covered the ground from one entrance to the other as fast as Marguerite’s could have done. In the room all was as still and orderly as when she had last left it; on the bed lay Preston ... asleep? No! One look was enough, and, rushing forward, she pushed out of her way the Salvières doctor, who stood white-faced and helpless between her and the quiet form. “Have you tried everything?” she asked, tremulously, her hand on the still heart, her lips twitching. “Yes, everything--so heavy a dose of chloral paralyzes the heart quickly--and when the doctor there called me it was already all over.” Tatiana swayed a little. “Chloral!” she said, dully. “Chloral--left near him! And I never thought of that, miserable fool that I am!” “Who could have thought of it, Madame la Duchesse, cheerful as he was?” “We should have thought!” She stooped over Preston and hopelessly put her ear to his heart, her fingers on his pulse. A rustle of paper made her straighten herself abruptly, and then she sat down all of a piece on the edge of the bed close to him and tore open the envelope addressed to her. Her fingers were shaking so, her eyes were so hazy, that at first she could not see, and with the gesture of a sorrowing child she passed the back of her hand across her face. “I must! I must!” she murmured, and slowly she unfolded the little leaves. “Another burden yet will I impose upon you,” she read, “that of keeping me near you in consecrated ground--for you will see to that, will you not? since from you I have learned so much.” She paused; two large tears glided down her cheeks; then she went on bravely to the end. “I leave all I have to leave to the Abbé de Kerdren for the poor; all excepting a sum sufficient to make him whom you called my _carabin_ independent for life. He has, I understand, a mother to support. You will approve, I know. Also you will think gently of me and pray for me--I do not doubt that. God bless and reward you.” The three men in the room, with heads lowered, hardly dared to breathe. “Olivier,” the Duchess said at last, very low, “go and fetch the Duke.” And she knelt down beside Preston. CHAPTER XX