"Sometimes one scarcely knows with whom one is connected," she said. "If
you will excuse me, I will go and see if your room is prepared. We have
only one servant--now," she sighed plaintively, "and my daughter is
young and thoughtless."
"She is not the latter, at any rate," he said, but coldly enough. "Your
daughter displayed extraordinary presence of mind----"
"My stepdaughter, I ought to explain," broke in Mrs. Lorton, who could
not endure the praise of any other than herself. "My late husband--I am
a widow, Mr. Vernon--left me his two children as a trust, a sacred
trust, which I hope I have discharged to the best of my ability. I will
rejoin you presently."
He rose and bowed, and then leaned back and closed his eyes, and swore
gently but thoroughly.
Mrs. Lorton returned in a few minutes with Molly.
"If you will come now? We have sent for the doctor."
"Thank you, thank you!" he said, and he went upstairs with them; but he
would not permit them to assist him to take off his coat, and sat on the
edge of the bed waiting with a kind of impatient patience for the
doctor.
By sheer good luck it was just about the time old Doctor Spence made his
daily appearance in Shorne Mills, and Nell, running up to the crossway,
caught him as he was ambling along on his old gray cob.
"Eh? what is it, my dear? That monkey of a brother got into mischief
again?" he said, laying his hand on her shoulder. "What? Stranger? Broke
his arm? Come, come; you're frightened and upset. No need, no need!
What's a broken arm! If it had been his neck, now!"
"I'm not frightened, and I'm not upset!" said Nell indignantly, but with
a smile. "I'm out of breath with running."
"And out of color, too, Nell. No need to run back, my dear. I'll hurry
up and see what's wrong."
He spoke to the cob, who understood every word and touch of his master,
and jolted down the steep road, and Nell followed slowly. She was rather
pale, as he had noticed, but she was not frightened. In all her
uneventful life nothing so exciting, so disturbing had happened as this
accident. It was difficult to realize it, to realize that a great strong
man had been cast helpless at her feet, that she had had his head on her
lap; she looked down at the patch on her dress and shuddered. Was she
glad or sorry that she had chanced to be near when he fell? As she asked
herself the question her conscience smote her. What a question to arise
in her mind! Of course she should be glad, very glad, to have been able
to help him. Then the man's face rose before her, and appealed to her by
its whiteness, by the weary, wistful lines about the lips and eyes.