Meanwhile, Miss Susan looked on and listened to Bertie’s speeches with happy complacency. Bertie was heir to twenty thousand a year, and it would be delightful to have her darling Aurea living at Westmere, and established so near home.
One evening, returning from a garden-party, Miss Susan and her niece had a narrow escape of being killed. Aurea was seated in front—she disliked the stuffy interior, especially this warm weather; they had come to a red triangle notice, “Dangerous to Cyclists,” and were about to descend a long winding hill—the one hill of the neighbourhood. Just as they commenced the descent with the brake hard on, it suddenly broke, and in half a second the car had shot away!
Wynyard turned his head, and shouted, “Sit tight!” and gave all his mind to steering; he took the whole width of the road to get round the first corner, and then the hill made an even sharper drop; the car, which was heavy, gathered momentum with every yard, and it seemed impossible to reach the bottom of the hill without some terrible catastrophe. Half-way down was another motor. Wynyard yelled, sounded the horn, and flashed by; a pony-trap, ascending, had a narrow escape of being pulverised in the green car’s mad flight. Then, to the driver’s horror, he saw a great wagon and horses on the road near the foot of the hill, and turned cold with the thought that there might not be room to get by. They missed it by a hair’s-breadth, and continued their wild career. At last they came to the level at the foot of the slope, and Wynyard pulled up, after the most exciting two minutes he had ever experienced. He glanced at his two companions; they were both as white as death—and so was he! Miss Susan, for once, was speechless, but at last she signed that she wished to get out, and Wynyard helped her to the bank, on which she collapsed, inarticulate and gasping.
“It’s a good thing Aunt Bella was not with us,” said Aurea, and her voice sounded faint; “this time she really would have died! What happened?” turning to Owen.
“The brake rod broke, miss—the old car is rotten,” he added viciously.
“Old car!” repeated Susan, who, though her nerves were in a badly shattered condition, had at last found utterance.
“Very old and crazy—and you never know what she is going to do next, or what trick she will play you—and you ladies have been giving her a good deal of work lately.”
“If you had lost your head, Owen!” exclaimed Miss Susan.
“I hope I don’t often do that, miss,” he answered steadily.
“If you had not had splendid nerve, we would all have been killed; why, we just shaved that wagon by a hair’s-breadth—that would have been a smash! We were going so fast.”