"I'm not frightened, and I'm not upset!" said Nell indignantly, but with a smile. "I'm out of breath with running."
"And out of color, too, Nell. No need to run back, my dear. I'll hurry up and see what's wrong."
He spoke to the cob, who understood every word and touch of his master, and jolted down the steep road, and Nell followed slowly. She was rather pale, as he had noticed, but she was not frightened. In all her uneventful life nothing so exciting, so disturbing had happened as this accident. It was difficult to realize it, to realize that a great strong man had been cast helpless at her feet, that she had had his head on her lap; she looked down at the patch on her dress and shuddered. Was she glad or sorry that she had chanced to be near when he fell? As she asked herself the question her conscience smote her. What a question to arise in her mind! Of course she should be glad, very glad, to have been able to help him. Then the man's face rose before her, and appealed to her by its whiteness, by the weary, wistful lines about the lips and eyes.
"I wonder who he is?" she asked herself, conscious that she had never seen any one like him, that he was in some way different to any one of the men she had hitherto met.
As she walked slowly, thoughtfully down the road, a strange feeling came upon her; it was as if she had touched, if only with the finger tips, the fringe of the great unknown world.
The doctor, breaking away from the lengthy recountal of Mrs. Lorton, went upstairs to the spare room, where still sat Mr. Drake Vernon on the edge of the bed, very white, but very self-contained.
"How do you do, doctor?" he said quietly. "I've come a cropper and knocked my head and broken some of my bones. If you'll be so good——"
"Take off your coat. My good sir, why didn't you let them help you to undress?" broke in the old man, with the curtness of the country doctor, who, as a rule, is no respecter of persons.
"I've given these good people trouble enough already," was the reply. "Thanks; no, you don't hurt me—not more than can be helped. And I'm not going to faint. Thanks, thanks."
He got undressed and into bed, and the doctor "went over" him. As he got to the injured arm, Mr. Vernon drew his signet ring from his finger and slipped it in his pocket.