"You will send for me if you are ill, Daniel?"
"If I am really ill, I will send for you." So saying, he left her, went down-stairs, with great difficulty opened for himself the front door, and departed.
Lady Anna, though she had been told nothing of what had happened, except that her lover was hurt, at once surmised something of what had been done. Daniel Thwaite had suffered some hurt from her mother's wrath. She sat for a while thinking what it might have been. She had seen no sign of blood. Could it be that her mother had struck him in her anger with some chance weapon that had come to hand? That there had been violence she was sure,—and sure also that her mother had been in fault. When Daniel had been some few minutes gone she went down, that she might deliver his message. At the foot of the stairs, and near the door of the parlour, she met Mrs. Richards. "I suppose the young man has gone, my lady?" asked the woman.
"Mr. Thwaite has gone."
"And I make so bold, my lady, as to say that he ought not to come here. There has been a doing of some kind, but I don't know what. He says as how he's been hurt, and I'm sure I don't know how he should be hurt here,—unless he brought it with him. I never had nothing of the kind here before, long as I've been here. Of course your title and that is all right, my lady; but the young man isn't fit;—that's the truth of it. My belief is he'd been a drinking; and I won't have it in my house."
Lady Anna passed by her without a word and went into her mother's room. The Countess was still seated in her chair, and neither rose nor spoke when her daughter entered. "Mamma, Mr. Thwaite is hurt."
"Well;—what of it? Is it much that ails him?"
"He is in pain. What has been done, mamma?" The Countess looked at her, striving to learn from the girl's face and manner what had been told and what concealed. "Did you—strike him?"
"Has he said that I struck him?"
"No, mamma;—but something has been done that should not have been done. I know it. He has sent you a message, mamma."