An ice-cold clutch seemed to be at his heart. Madame de Mantes it certainly was, the grand French lady of the Court, whom Lord Rockhurst had many a time entertained in days (alack, how far off they seemed!) when people laughed and made merry; and among the gay she had been the gayest, among the bright and beautiful the brightest and most fair. Chitterley could remember how, in this very room, in that very chair—which they called the King’s chair, for his Majesty always sat in it when he visited, as he loved to do, his neighbour, “my Merry Rockhurst,” for an hour of pleasant converse—she had sung fit to make his old heart young again. Yet, in sooth, this was Madame de Mantes. Torn and haggard, through the strands of her uncurled hair, her glazed eyes looked at him from red and swollen lids, piteously, scarcely as if she could see. Except for a patch of rouge, her face was livid. He thought of the figure he had seen crawling along the walls, and dread was upon him. “How hot it is—” she complained, in a dry, whispering voice. “Fires, fires everywhere!—Give me to drink!” The man hesitated a moment, upon the blind impulse of flight. But the long habit of fidelity was stronger even than fear of the pestilence. He took up a flask from a table,—the _en cas_ after the foreign manner, awaiting the master’s return,—poured out a glass of wine and tendered it to her. “Hot? Eh—but your hand is cold, my lady!” She drank; seemed to gain a little strength. “Cold?” she took up the word with an inconsequent laugh. “So would you be, _mon ami_, had you been roaming the streets, for months … years … as I have been, to-night! You are a kind old man. The others ran from me … one robbed me and beat me, then he, too, ran away.…” And then Chitterley marked how cruelly, in sooth, the woman had been dealt with; her gown and bodice rent where seemingly the jewels had been snatched; and there was blood on her neck, trickling from the torn lobe of her little ear. “_Mon beau Rockhurst!_” she went on, in that loud whisper, as of one light-headed. “I drink to you, to you.” She lifted the cup again, but stopped, catching at her throat: “It is fire—why did you give me fire to drink?” He seized the glass from her failing hand. “God ’a’ mercy! you are raving, madam!—you must.…” She turned her red glance to him, then beat the air with a fierce gesture, imposing silence, and seemed to strain her ear to sounds inaudible:— “Oh, don’t laugh, Rockhurst, don’t laugh…! Oh, if you like not a salt cheek, I can be merry—” Chitterley had drawn back, step by step, to the farther end of the room. Then, of a sudden, very loud and angrily, he spoke:— “Madam, you are ailing. You are ill. You must go home!” She came back to her surroundings with a start and a cry:—