He perceived that by crossing the fields, he could shorten the distance between them, if not get before her, which was his best chance of giving her effectual help. Some trees hid the road from him as he flew across the fields, but when he regained the road, he knew by the sound of the horse's feet that he had gained his object—he was in front of the runaway. A moment more, and the terrified horse came in sight. Alas, he was riderless!
Guy uttered a cry of horror, and rode back along the road, but when he reached his sister's side, she was dead. She had been killed on the spot.
Guy knelt beside her in silent agony, and before he had quite realised the awful truth, Sir Aymer rode up, still swearing and gesticulating, too angry to see the sad group which barred his way until Guy shouted to him hoarsely to stop.
The horror of this event shattered the young man's nerves completely, and, for a time, seemed to threaten his reason. He was of a nervous, delicate temperament, and it really seemed as if he never quite recovered from the effects of this shock. He was seriously ill for some time, and when the illness passed away, he had become possessed by the unfounded notion that if his father had followed poor Clarice, instead of stopping to rage at the workmen, she might have been saved. In very truth, Sir Aymer could in no way have prevented the accident; but Guy during his illness was haunted by the look of his father's face as he rode up, panting and furious, to where he knelt beside his dead sister.
As soon as he was well enough to travel, he left home, in spite of Sir Aymer's wrath, and for ten years he travelled about without once seeing his father. Then he wrote that he was in London, and Sir Aymer ordered him to come to Egerton Highfield without delay: it was for Guy that he was waiting now, as he paced the west terrace on that bright blustering March day.
Presently a door, opening from the great hall on the terrace, which, to all appearance, was merely a window, with the usual heavy wooden frame and the stone wall of the house beneath it, swung open, and young Aymer Egerton came out.
"Sir Aymer, I am going up to the East Lodge to meet Guy. He'll think it strange if I don't meet him there, at least."
"Never mind what he thinks. I wish to see him first, and alone," replied Sir Aymer, curtly. "I desired you not to meet him at the station—why then should you think I want you to meet him at the Lodge? It is quite enough that you should be an obstinate fool yourself, without teaching him to be another."
"I should hardly have time to do that, sir, in the drive up from the gate."
"Don't go! That's all about it," answered Sir Aymer, in a voice which one would hardly use in speaking to a dog, unless that dog were in grievous error.