“Dead, dead!” cried Patrick.
At this cry all the crowd reentered the apartment, and throughout the palace and town there was nothing but consternation and tumult.
As soon as Lord de Winter saw Buckingham was dead, he ran to Felton, whom the soldiers still guarded on the terrace of the palace.
“Wretch!” said he to the young man, who since the death of Buckingham had regained that coolness and self-possession which never after abandoned him, “wretch! what have you done?”
“I have avenged myself!” said he.
“Avenged yourself,” said the baron. “Rather say that you have served as an instrument to that accursed woman; but I swear to you that this crime shall be her last.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” replied Felton, quietly, “and I am ignorant of whom you are speaking, my Lord. I killed the Duke of Buckingham because he twice refused you yourself to appoint me captain; I have punished him for his injustice, that is all.”
De Winter, stupefied, looked on while the soldiers bound Felton, and could not tell what to think of such insensibility.
One thing alone, however, threw a shade over the pallid brow of Felton. At every noise he heard, the simple Puritan fancied he recognized the step and voice of Milady coming to throw herself into his arms, to accuse herself, and die with him.
All at once he started. His eyes became fixed upon a point of the sea, commanded by the terrace where he was. With the eagle glance of a sailor he had recognized there, where another would have seen only a gull hovering over the waves, the sail of a sloop which was directed toward the coast of France.