'The Countess makes the lemonade, and the Courier takes it to his master.
'Returning, on the way to his own room, he is so weak, and feels,

he says, so giddy, that he is obliged to support himself
by the backs of the chairs as he passes them. The Baron,

always considerate to persons of low degree, offers his arm.
"I am afraid, my poor fellow," he says, "that you are really ill."

The Courier makes this extraordinary answer: "It's all over with me, Sir:
I have caught my death."

'The Countess is naturally startled. "You are not an old man,"
she says, trying to rouse the Courier's spirits. "At your age,

catching cold doesn't surely mean catching your death?" The Courier
fixes his eyes despairingly on the Countess.

"My lungs are weak, my Lady," he says; "I have already had two attacks
of bronchitis. The second time, a great physician joined my own doctor

in attendance on me. He considered my recovery almost in the light
of a miracle. Take care of yourself," he said. "If you have a

third attack of bronchitis, as certainly as two and two make four,
you will be a dead man. I feel the same inward shivering, my Lady,

that I felt on those two former occasions--and I tell you again,
I have caught my death in Venice."

'Speaking some comforting words, the Baron leads him to his room.
The Countess is left alone on the stage.

'She seats herself, and looks towards the door by which the Courier
has been led out. "Ah! my poor fellow," she says, "if you could

only change constitutions with my Lord, what a happy result would
follow for the Baron and for me! If you could only get cured

of a trumpery cold with a little hot lemonade, and if he could
only catch his death in your place--!"

'She suddenly pauses--considers for a while--and springs
to her feet, with a cry of triumphant surprise: the wonderful,

the unparalleled idea has crossed her mind like a flash of lightning.
Make the two men change names and places--and the deed is done!

Where are the obstacles? Remove my Lord (by fair means or foul)
from his room; and keep him secretly prisoner in the palace,

to live or die as future necessity may determine. Place the Courier
in the vacant bed, and call in the doctor to see him--ill, in my

Lord's character, and (if he dies) dying under my Lord's name!'
The manuscript dropped from Henry's hands. A sickening sense of

horror overpowered him. The question which had occurred to his mind
at the close of the First Act of the Play assumed a new and terrible

interest now. As far as the scene of the Countess's soliloquy,
the incidents of the Second Act had reflected the events of his late

brother's life as faithfully as the incidents of the First Act.
Was the monstrous plot, revealed in the lines which he had just read,

the offspring of the Countess's morbid imagination? or had she,
in this case also, deluded herself with the idea that she was

inventing when she was really writing under the influence of her own
guilty remembrances of the past? If the latter interpretation were

the true one, he had just read the narrative of the contemplated
murder of his brother, planned in cold blood by a woman who was at

that moment inhabiting the same house with him. While, to make
the fatality complete, Agnes herself had innocently provided

the conspirators with the one man who was fitted to be 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,

or to denounce her before the authorities as a murderess at large.
Arrived at her door, he was met by a person just leaving the room.

The person was the manager. He was hardly recognisable; he looked
and spoke like a man in a state of desperation.

'Oh, go in, if you like!' he said to Henry. 'Mark this, sir!
I am not a superstitious man; but I do begin to believe that crimes

carry their own curse with them. This hotel is under a curse.
What happens in the morning? We discover a crime committed in the old

days of the palace. The night comes, and brings another dreadful
event with it--a death; a sudden and shocking death, in the house.

Go in, and see for yourself! I shall resign my situation,
Mr. Westwick: I can't contend with the fatalities that pursue

me here!'
Henry entered the room.

The Countess was stretched on her bed. The doctor on one side,
and the chambermaid on the other, were standing looking at her.

From time to time, she drew a heavy stertorous breath,
like a person oppressed in sleeping. 'Is she likely to die?'

Henry asked.
'She is dead,' the doctor answered. 'Dead of the rupture of a blood-vessel

on the brain. Those sounds that you hear are purely mechanical--
they may go on for hours.'

Henry looked at the chambermaid. She had little to tell.
The Countess had refused to go to bed, and had placed herself at her

desk to proceed with her writing. Finding it useless to remonstrate
with her, the maid had left the room to speak to the manager.

In the shortest possible time, the doctor was summoned to the hotel,
and found the Countess dead on the floor. There was this to tell--

and no more.
Looking at the writing-table as he went out, Henry saw the sheet

of paper on which the Countess had traced her last lines of writing.
The characters were almost illegible. Henry could just distinguish

the words, 'First Act,' and 'Persons of the Drama.' The lost wretch
had been thinking of her Play to the last, and had begun it all

over again!
CHAPTER XXVII

Henry returned to his room.
His first impulse was to throw aside the manuscript, and never to look

at it again. The one chance of relieving his mind from the dreadful
uncertainty that oppressed it, by obtaining positive evidence

of the truth, was a chance annihilated by the Countess's death.
What good purpose could be served, what relief could he anticipate,

if he read more?
He walked up and down the room. After an interval, his thoughts

took a new direction; the question of the manuscript presented
itself under another point of view. Thus far, his reading

had only informed him that the conspiracy had been planned.
How did he know that the plan had been put in execution?

The manuscript lay just before him on the floor. He hesitated;
then picked it up; and, returning to the table, read on as follows,

from the point at which he had left off.
'While the Countess is still absorbed in the bold yet simple combination

of circumstances which she has discovered, the Baron returns.
He takes a serious view of the case of the Courier; it may be necessary,

he thinks, to send for medical advice. No servant is left in the palace,
now the English maid has taken her departure. The Baron himself

must fetch the doctor, if the doctor is really needed.
' "Let us have medical help, by all means," his sister replies.

"But wait and hear something that I have to say to you first."
She then electrifies the Baron by communicating her idea

to him. What danger of discovery have they to dread?
My Lord's life in Venice has been a life of absolute seclusion:

nobody but his banker knows him, even by personal appearance.
He has presented his letter of credit as a perfect stranger;

and he and his banker have never seen each other since that
first visit. He has given no parties, and gone to no parties.

On the few occasions when he has hired a gondola or taken a walk,
he has always been alone. Thanks to the atrocious suspicion

which makes him ashamed of being seen with his wife, he has
led the very life which makes the proposed enterprise easy

of accomplishment.