The manuscript dropped from Henry's hands. A sickening sense of horroroverpowered him. The question which had occurred to his mind at theclose of the First Act of the Play assumed a new and terrible interestnow. As far as the scene of the Countess's soliloquy, the incidents ofthe Second Act had reflected the events of his late brother's life asfaithfully as the incidents of the First Act. Was the monstrous plot,revealed in the lines which he had just read, the offspring of theCountess's morbid imagination? or had she, in this case also, deludedherself with the idea that she was inventing when she was reallywriting under the influence of her own guilty remembrances of the past?If the latter interpretation were the true one, he had just read thenarrative of the contemplated murder of his brother, planned in coldblood by a woman who was at that moment inhabiting the same house withhim. While, to make the fatality complete, Agnes herself hadinnocently provided the conspirators with the one man who was fitted tobe the passive agent of their crime.
Even the bare doubt that it might be so was more than he could endure.He left his room; resolved to force the truth out of the Countess, orto denounce her before the authorities as a murderess at large.
Arrived at her door, he was met by a person just leaving the room. Theperson was the manager. He was hardly recognisable; he looked andspoke like a man in a state of desperation.
'Oh, go in, if you like!' he said to Henry. 'Mark this, sir! I am nota superstitious man; but I do begin to believe that crimes carry theirown curse with them. This hotel is under a curse. What happens in themorning? We discover a crime committed in the old days of the palace.The night comes, and brings another dreadful event with it--a death; asudden and shocking death, in the house. Go in, and see for yourself!I shall resign my situation, Mr. Westwick: I can't contend with thefatalities that pursue me here!'
Henry entered the room.
The Countess was stretched on her bed. The doctor on one side, and thechambermaid on the other, were standing looking at her. From time totime, she drew a heavy stertorous breath, like a person oppressed insleeping. 'Is she likely to die?' Henry asked.
'She is dead,' the doctor answered. 'Dead of the rupture of ablood-vessel on the brain. Those sounds that you hear are purelymechanical--they may go on for hours.'
Henry looked at the chambermaid. She had little to tell. The Countesshad refused to go to bed, and had placed herself at her desk to proceedwith her writing. Finding it useless to remonstrate with her, the maidhad left the room to speak to the manager. In the shortest possibletime, the doctor was summoned to the hotel, and found the Countess deadon the floor. There was this to tell--and no more.
Looking at the writing-table as he went out, Henry saw the sheet ofpaper on which the Countess had traced her last lines of writing. Thecharacters were almost illegible. Henry could just distinguish thewords, 'First Act,' and 'Persons of the Drama.' The lost wretch hadbeen thinking of her Play to the last, and had begun it all over again!