“Yes,” said Clive excitedly, as the groom paused, “and then?”
“Why, sir, I can’t rightly tell, the light was so bad. If it’d been anyone else but Mr. Conover, I’d say he lost his nerve, an’ when Dunderberg reared up he forget to bring him down like he’d done those other times, or maybe he did hit the horse between the ears again an’ didn’t hit hard enough. Anyhow, over goes Dunderberg backward—clean fifteen feet drop—into the quarry. An’ Mr. Conover under him. An’ then——”
But Clive had moved away. The doctors had finished their consultation, and one of them—Dr. Hawes, the Conover family physician—had again approached that silent figure on the couch.
At sight of Standish the second doctor came forward to meet the young man.
“No,” he whispered, reading the unspoken question in Clive’s face, “no possible hope. He can’t last over an hour longer at most. Another man, crushed as he was, would have been killed at once. As it is, he probably won’t recover consciousness. Nothing but his tremendous vitality holds the shreds of life in him so long as this.”
“Does his wife know——?”
“She is not in a state to be told. I wish we could persuade her to leave the room. Perhaps Miss Lanier——”
A gesture from Dr. Hawes drew them toward the couch.
“He is coming to his senses,” said the family physician, adding under his breath, so that only his colleague and Clive could hear; “it is the final rally. Not one man in a thousand——”
But Clive had caught Anice’s eye and beckoned her to lead Mrs. Conover to the side of the couch.