He talked a bit outside with the doctor from Poitiers, and then they
came in to see the marquis together. I was with him, and so was Mr.
Urbain. My lady had been to receive the doctor from Paris, and she
didn't come back with him into the room. He sat down by the marquis;
I can see him there now, with his hand on the marquis's wrist, and Mr.
Urbain watching him with a little looking-glass in his hand. 'I'm sure
he's better,' said the little doctor from Poitiers; 'I'm sure he'll come
back.' A few moments after he had said this the marquis opened his eyes,
as if he were waking up, and looked at us, from one to the other. I saw
him look at me, very softly, as you'd say. At the same moment my lady
came in on tiptoe; she came up to the bed and put in her head between me
and the count. The marquis saw her and gave a long, most wonderful moan.
He said something we couldn't understand, and he seemed to have a kind
of spasm. He shook all over and then closed his eyes, and the doctor
jumped up and took hold of my lady. He held her for a moment a bit
roughly. The marquis was stone dead! This time there were those there
that knew."
Newman felt as if he had been reading by starlight the report of highly
important evidence in a great murder case. "And the paper--the paper!"
he said, excitedly.
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