He was dead. Dr. Coutras made an
effort of will and bent over that battered horror. Then he
started violently, and terror blazed in his heart, for he felt
that someone was behind him. It was Ata. He had not heard
her get up. She was standing at his elbow, looking at what
he looked at.
"Good Heavens, my nerves are all distraught," he said.
"You nearly frightened me out of my wits."
He looked again at the poor dead thing that had been man, and
then he started back in dismay.
"But he was blind."
"Yes; he had been blind for nearly a year."
Chapter LVII
AT that moment we were interrupted by the appearance of
Madame Coutras, who had been paying visits. She came in,
like a ship in full sail, an imposing creature, tall and stout,
with an ample bust and an obesity girthed in alarmingly by
straight-fronted corsets. She had a bold hooked nose and three chins.
She held herself upright. She had not yielded for an instant
to the enervating charm of the tropics, but contrariwise was
more active, more worldly, more decided than anyone in a
temperate clime would have thought it possible to be.
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