“Oh, me!” she whispered. “’Twas I drove you to it. You might ha’ been murdered, and ’twas I drove you to it.”
“Nonsense, Betty. ’Twas coming to a head before you spoke. I should have had it out with Mr. Breeds in any case, sooner or later.”
“And he poisoned your wine? Oh, oh!”
“Now, my dear—that was only a move in the game. Forewarned is forearmed, you know. But my head seems like to burst. Will you put your cool hand on it, Betty?”
She acquiesced timidly, as he lay against the hedge-side. But soon, emboldened by the yearning pity that, in her sex, so passionlessly yields itself to any passionate appeal for help or comfort, she wrought with instinctive sympathy upon the throbbing temples and pressed the hard pain from them.
“It is like a little snow-wind from the mountains blowing over flowers,” murmured the patient drowsily. “What are you doing at ‘Delsrop’ again, Betty?”
“At ‘Delsrop’! Sure your honour’s dreaming,” she cooed. “You lie a’most within hailing distance of the ‘First Inn.’”
Mr. Tuke uttered an exclamation and struggled into a sitting posture.
“Eh!” he cried in a startled voice, and looked bewildered about him. True enough, the roofs of Stockbridge showed over the trees a quarter of a mile below him.
“Oh, Betty!” he groaned—“whither have my sodden wits led me?—And I made sure I was lying near the gates of the drive. I must mount and prick homewards.”