"I say, better shut her up, sir, or Mrs. Carstairs will hear!" Anstice glanced anxiously towards the door and Major Carstairs nodded.
"Yes. We don't want the whole house about our ears." He turned to the woman who now stood sullenly silent in his grasp; though if looks could kill there would certainly have been a practice for sale in Littlefield on the morrow. "Now see here, Tochatti, you've been fairly cornered--caught--and you will have to pay the penalty. In the meantime I shall lock you in your room until the morning, and I warn you it is useless trying to escape."
A noise in the doorway cut him short; and turning hastily round Anstice beheld Chloe Carstairs standing there, the light of the candle she carried casting queer flickering shadows across her pale face, in which the blue eyes gleamed more brightly than ever before.
"Chloe!" In his surprise Major Carstairs released the woman; and with a bound she was across the room, pouring out another wild flood of protestations, in which the words "il dottore" and "la bambina" occurred over and over again. Higher and higher rose her voice, more shrill and hysterical her outpourings, and Anstice's professional instinct warned him that such abnormal excitement must end in disaster--though of the nature of that ending he had at the moment no conception.
Seeing, however, that the woman, while exhausting herself, was also distressing her mistress, he moved forward with the intention of warning Tochatti she was endangering her own health; but his word of caution was never uttered, for as he approached her she spun round with a last fierce torrent of words, and, stooping down, with incredible swiftness plucked a sharp dagger from some secret hiding-place, and lunged at Anstice with all her maddened might.
Luckily for him her excitement impeded her aim; and while she doubtless intended stabbing him to the heart she merely inflicted a flesh wound on the upper part of the arm which he had raised to defend himself.
The next moment Chloe, with a quite unlooked-for strength, had wrested the weapon from the woman's grasp; and then ensued a scene which even Anstice could hardly bear to look back upon in after days.
Whether or no his theory of possession were justified, the woman was for the time being beside herself. Seeing the dagger in Chloe's hand she threw herself upon her mistress and struggled wildly to regain her property, inflicting a series of cuts on her own hand before Chloe could get free to hurl the deadly thing into a corner of the room; and even when Anstice and Carstairs had overpowered her with their superior might she fought for freedom like a mad woman. But this abnormal strength could not continue. Suddenly, as Anstice had foreseen, the inevitable collapse occurred. Nature could stand no more, and with a last wild writhe the woman slipped through the hands which held her, and uttering a sharp cry fell to the floor in a state of unconsciousness.