Nella had the front bedroom on the first floor; Miss Spencer was immured in the attic; the last-named lady had been singularly quiet and incurious, taking her food from Nella and asking no questions, the old woman went at nights to her own abode in the purlieus of the harbour. Hour after hour Aribert sat silent by his nephew’s bed-side, attending mechanically to his wants, and every now and then gazing hard into the vacant, anguished face, as if trying to extort from that mask the secrets which it held. Aribert was tortured by the idea that if he could have only half an hour’s, only a quarter of an hour’s, rational speech with Prince Eugen, all might be cleared up and put right, and by the fact that that rational talk was absolutely impossible on Eugen’s part until the fever had run its course. As the minutes crept on to midnight the watcher, made nervous by the intense, electrical atmosphere which seems always to surround a person who is dangerously ill, grew more and more a prey to vague and terrible apprehensions. His mind dwelt hysterically on the most fatal possibilities. He wondered what would occur if by any ill-chance Eugen should die in that bed--how he would explain the affair to Posen and to the Emperor, how he would justify himself. He saw himself being tried for murder, sentenced (him--a Prince of the blood!), led to the scaffold... a scene unparalleled in Europe for over a century! ... Then he gazed anew at the sick man, and thought he saw death in every drawn feature of that agonized face. He could have screamed aloud. His ears heard a peculiar resonant boom. He started--it was nothing but the city clock striking twelve. But there was another sound--a mysterious shuffle at the door. He listened; then jumped from his chair. Nothing now! Nothing! But still he felt drawn to the door, and after what seemed an interminable interval he went and opened it, his heart beating furiously. Nella lay in a heap on the door mat. She was fully dressed, but had apparently lost consciousness. He clutched at her slender body, picked her up, carried her to the chair by the fire-place, and laid her in it. He had forgotten all about Eugen. ‘What is it, my angel?’ he whispered, and then he kissed her--kissed her twice. He could only look at her; he did not know what to do to succour her. At last she opened her eyes and sighed. ‘Where am I?’ she asked vaguely, in a tremulous tone as she recognized him. ‘Is it you? Did I do anything silly? Did I faint?’ ‘What has happened? Were you ill?’ he questioned anxiously. He was kneeling at her feet, holding her hand tight. ‘I saw Jules by the side of my bed,’ she murmured; ‘I’m sure I saw him; he laughed at me. I had not undressed. I sprang up, frightened, but he had gone, and then I ran downstairs--to you.’ ‘You were dreaming,’ he soothed her. ‘Was I?’ ‘You must have been. I have not heard a sound. No one could have entered. But if you like I will wake Mr Racksole.’