Lilian makes a faint sign to him to hold back, which he either does not or will not see. Bringing his horse up to the fence at a rather wild pace, he lifts him. The good brute rises obediently, springs forward, but jumps too short, and in another second horse and rider are rolling together in a confused mass upon the sward beyond.
The horse, half in and half out of the water, recovers himself quickly, and, scrambling to his feet, stands quietly ashamed, trembling in every limb, at a little distance from his master.
But Archibald never stirs; he lies motionless, with his arms flung carelessly above his head, and his face turned upward to the clouded sky,—a brilliant speck of crimson upon the green grass.
Lilian, with a sickening feeling of fear, and a suppressed scream, gallops to his side, and, springing to the ground, kneels down close to him, and lifts his head upon her knee.
His face is deadly pale, a small spot of blood upon his right cheek rendering even more ghastly its excessive pallor. A frantic horror lest he be dead fills her mind and heart. Like funeral bells his words return and smite cruelly upon her brain: "If I am killed blame yourself." Is she to blame? Oh, how harshly she spoke to him! With what bitterness did she rebuke—when he—when he was only telling her of his great love for her!
Was ever woman so devoid of tender feeling? to goad and rail at a man only because she had made conquest of his heart! And to choose this day of all others to slight and wound him, when, had she not been hatefully, unpardonably blind, she might have seen he was bent upon his own destruction.
How awfully white he is! Has death indeed sealed his lips forever? Oh, that he might say one word, if only to forgive her! With one hand she smooths back his dark crisp hair from his forehead, and tries to wipe away with her handkerchief the terrible blood-stain from his poor cheek.
"Archie, Archie," she whispers to him, piteously, bending her face so close to his that any one might deem the action a caress, "speak to me: will you not hear me, when I tell you how passionately I regret my words?"
But no faintest flicker of intelligence crosses the face lying so mute and cold upon her knees. For the first time he is stone deaf to the voice of her entreaty.