Nurse Baker did not move her head, but
continued watching her patient, with hands ready to act.
"Come in," she said, not looking round.
Lady Ashbridge's face was towards the door. As Sir James entered, she
suddenly sprang up, and in her right hand that lay beside her was a
knife, which she had no doubt taken from the tea-table when she came
upstairs. She turned swiftly towards Michael, and stabbed at him with
it.
"It's a trap," she cried. "You've led me into a trap. They are going to
take me away."
Michael had thrown up his arm to shield his head. The blow fell between
shoulder and elbow, and he felt the edge of the knife grate on his bone.
And from deep in his heart sprang the leaping fountains of compassion
and love and yearning pity.
CHAPTER XII
Michael was sitting in the big studio at the Falbes' house late
one afternoon at the end of June, and the warmth and murmur of the
full-blown summer filled the air. The day had so far declined that the
rays of the sun, level in its setting, poured slantingly in through
the big window to the north, and shining through the foliage of the
plane-trees outside made a diaper of rosy illuminated spots and angled
shadows on the whitewashed wall.
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