"Mademoiselle is still unconscious, m'sieur," was the servant's reply to his eager inquiry. "The doctors have been several times this afternoon, but they hold out no hope."
"I wonder if I can be of any assistance?" Hugh asked in French.
"I think not, m'sieur. What assistance can any of us give poor Mademoiselle?"
Ah, what indeed, Hugh thought as he put down the receiver.
Yet while she lived, there was still a faint hope that he would be able to learn the secret which he anticipated would place him in such a position that he might defy those who had raised their hands against his father and himself.
His marriage with Dorise, indeed his whole future, depended upon the disclosure of the clever plot whereby Louise Lambert was to become his wife.
His friend Brock was not in the hotel, so he went to his room to dress for dinner. Ten minutes later a page brought a message from Lady Ranscomb inviting him to go over to Nice to the ball.
He drew a long breath. He was in no mood for dancing that night, for he was far too perturbed regarding the critical condition of the notorious woman who had turned his friend.
On every hand there were whispers and wild reports concerning the tragedy at the Villa Amette. He had heard about it from a dozen people, though not a word was in the papers. Yet nobody dreamed that he, of all men, had been present when the mysterious shot was fired, or that he was, indeed, the cause of the secret attack.
He dressed slowly, and having done so, descended to the salle a manger. The big white room was filled with a gay, reckless cosmopolitan crowd--the crowd of well-dressed moths of both sexes which eternally flutters at night at Monte Carlo, attracted by the candle held by the great god Hazard.
Brock was not there, and he seated himself alone at their table near the long-curtained window. He was surprised at his friend's absence. Perhaps, however, he had met friends and gone over to Beaulieu, Nice, or Mentone with them.
He had but little appetite. He ate a small portion of langouste with an exquisite salad, and drank a single glass of chablis. Then he rose and quitted the chattering, laughing crowd of diners, whose gossip was mainly upon a sensational run on the red at five o'clock that evening. One woman, stout and of Hebrew type, sitting with three men, was wildly merry, for she had won the equivalent to sixty thousand pounds.
All that recklessness jarred upon the young man's nerves. He tried to close his ears to it all, and ascended again to his room, where he sat in silent despondency till it was time for him to go round to the Metropole to join Lady Ranscomb and Dorise.