Then the maid turned to kneel down by her unconscious mistress. Nita lay motionless, but when Lizette put her ear against the girl's heart she was rejoiced to find that it was still throbbing faintly.
"Poor darling, that old fiend didn't quite kill her!" she cried joyfully, and set to work to revive her hapless mistress.
But Nita came back to life very slowly, and it was not until her wet garments were all removed and she was laid in her bed, that she opened a pair of languid dark eyes and met the affectionate gaze of the anxious maid.
"What has happened?" she breathed faintly, and Lizette explained, softening the whole affair as much as she could, not to excite the patient.
"You saved my life, Lizette," cried Nita gratefully. Then she shuddered at perceiving the unconscious form of the old fortune-teller.
"I'll see how much she's hurt now; I have been tending to you all this time," said the maid. "I don't suppose she's dead, but there's an awful cut on the side of her head. She will go to prison for this if she lives--oh, Lordy!" as the apparently dead woman suddenly opened her dazed eyes and lifted up her grizzled head. Lizette sprang to the door, and locked it.
"You don't get out of here except to go to prison, old woman," she observed, then brought water and sponges and bathed and bandaged the wounded head. Then she gave Meg a drink of cordial, and said:
"You're all right now. The cut ain't as bad as I thought at first. Well, now I'm going to send for an officer and hand you over on a charge of attempted robbery and murder."
The hag sprang to her feet, her sullen face ghastly in the dim light, her eyes lurid with hate.
"You shall not send me to prison," she hissed savagely.
"You will see!" cried the maid, stretching out her hand to the bell.
Meg's skinny, upraised arm arrested the movement.
"Wait. See what your mistress will say," she snarled, and, moving to the side of the bed, she bent down and whispered sharply for several minutes in Nita's ear.
A low cry of horror came from the bed, and the old harpy moved aside, muttering significantly:
"I knew when I told you that, you would let me go free. Indeed, I did not mean to touch you if I could get the gold without--but you took me by surprise."