Then suddenly, Lady Beltham, who had looked on in frenzied distress at all this scene of horror, came forward, a tragic figure, her eyes wide with terror. “Oh! it is horrible,” she groaned, falling on her knees beside the half-drowned woman’s body, “it is horrible, she tried to save him, to put them off the scent! They have killed an innocent woman! they have killed Elisabeth Dollon!” CHAPTER XXI JOY CAN KILL “You are good and kind, madam.” “No, no! don’t say that.” “But you are! you are exquisitely good, exquisitely kind.” A spasm of pain crossed the Grand Duchess Alexandra’s face, and it was in almost a harsh tone that she protested again: “You are mistaken. Then, to begin with, the doctor forbids you to talk; you must obey his orders so as to get well, and you know very well you have to get well quickly.” Moving soundlessly over the thick carpets of the sick-room, the grand duchess stepped up to the bed on which lay the young girl she addressed. With a light, skilful touch she shook up the pillows, re-arranged the bedclothes and settled the patient in the most comfortable position. “Try to get to sleep, won’t you?” “I am not sleepy; I am burning with fever and I feel thirsty—oh! so thirsty.” The grand duchess carefully measured out a few drops of champagne into a glass, added a little water, and held out the cool, refreshing beverage: “Drink, my poor darling. The doctor did not forbid this.” A wan smile hovered on the patient’s lips, as she eagerly quenched her raging thirst. “The doctor!” she murmured, “why does the doctor worry me with his prescriptions? He knows I shall not get well.” But in a severe voice now, a tinge of bitterness even in its tones, the grand duchess replied: “I do not wish you, Elisabeth, to talk like that. You have no right not to get well.... Think of him!” By what series of strange events came Elisabeth Dollon, for the injured woman was indeed Elisabeth Dollon, to be in this house, the house of the Grand Duchess Alexandra, to have that enigmatic personage for sick-nurse? The pursuit of Fandor among the underwood of the Ile de Beauté, while the blazing lake was burning itself out, had ended in a startling tragedy, the discovery of Elisabeth wounded, shot by the police-officers, who had fired on her in the belief they were shooting at Fantômas. How had the mistake come about? Alas! it found its explanation in a terrible scene that had just passed between the Grand Duchess Alexandra and the unhappy girl the young journalist loved. When the first moments of stupefaction were over, and the officers of justice were hotly pursuing the fugitive, Elisabeth Dollon had confessed to the grand duchess in the stammering accents of terror, that it was really and truly the journalist Fandor she had seen and denounced under the name of Fantômas.