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"Very dangerously ill," he answered; "if you will grant me a proof of your affections, we will just go in to see him on the way." "Very well," she said. "Yes, but afterwards. Dear Eugene, do be nice, and don't preach to me. Come." They set out. Eugene said nothing for a while. "What is it now?" she asked. "I can hear the death-rattle in your father's throat," he said almost angrily.
"What do I care if I'm picked up to-morrow morning on the pavement of the Rue Plumet, killed by the blows of my father's club, or whether I'm found a year from now in the nets at Saint-Cloud or the Isle of Swans in the midst of rotten old corks and drowned dogs?" She was forced to pause; she was seized by a dry cough, her breath came from her weak and narrow chest like the death-rattle.
Come, make short work of it, break her neck gripe harder back with her, back with here against the bedstead: keep her down, down I say she must not rise again. Crack! went a little something in her neck did you hear it? There's the death-rattle, the last smothery complicated gasp what, didn't you hear that? And the devil congratulated Simon on his victory.
The next morning, an hour or two after Madame de Lamotte had swallowed it, the maid who had given it to her came and told Derues the invalid was sleeping very heavily and snoring, and asked if she ought to be awoke. He went into the room, and, opening the curtains, approached the bed. He listened for some time, and recognised that the supposed snoring was really he death-rattle.
Turning back, they found all the Indians crowded around the travail in which the woman was lying. They reached her just in time to hear the death-rattle in her throat. In a moment she lay dead in the basket of the vehicle.
And what is more interesting than the death-rattle of an empire corrupt to the very marrow of its bones, than the sombre galvanism under the influence of which the skeleton of tyranny danced upon the tombs of Heliogabalus and Caracalla? How beautiful that mummy of Rome, embalmed in the perfumes of Nero and swathed in the shroud of Tiberius!
He had approached the bedside. She caught his hand and held it in a vise-like clutch. "No," he said, recoiling. "To give you my dying malediction to curse you with my latest breath! I hate you, Sir Jasper Kingsland, falsest of all mankind! and if the dead can return and torment the living, then do you beware of me!" She spoke in panting gasps, the death-rattle sounding in her skinny throat.
But, gentlemen," he paused to search the faces of his listeners, "Bella knew the truth. Hers is no circumstantial evidence. With quick, anguished breath, and life-blood ebbing from her, and eyeballs glazing, she spoke the truth. With dark night coming on, and the death-rattle in her throat, she raised herself weakly and pointed a shaking finger at the accused, thus, and she said, 'Him, him, him.
These neighbors stood a few moments looking at the mail carrier reflectively while he talked; but fatigue soon began to show itself, and one after another they climbed up and occupied the top rail of the fence, hump-shouldered and grave, like a company of buzzards assembled for supper and listening for the death-rattle. Old Damrell said: "Tha hain't no news 'bout the jedge, hit ain't likely?"
After a little he left her, and was already in the next room when he heard her call out in her loud voice: "Stocky! Stocky!" As he ran back the death-rattle was in her throat. She tossed herself violently from side to side; then suddenly drew up her legs, and it was over.
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