Perhaps some foolish hope that her call might rouse him had taken possession of her; for now, seeing how nothing but deepest silence answers her, she lets a groan escape her. Will nobody ever come? Lifting in fierce impatience a face white as the senseless man's beneath her, she encounters Guy's eyes fixed upon her, who has by chance seen the catastrophe, and has hastened to her aid.
"Do something for him,—something," she cries, trembling; "give him brandy! it will, it must do him good."
Guy, kneeling down beside Chesney, places his hand beneath his coat, and feels for his heart intently.
"He is not dead!" murmurs Lilian, in an almost inaudible tone: "say he is alive. I told him never to speak to me again: but I did not dream I should be so terribly obeyed. Archie, Archie!"
Her manner is impassioned. Remorse and terror, working together, produce in her all the appearance, of despairing anguish. She bears herself as a woman might who gazes at the dead body of him she holds dearest on earth; and Guy, looking silently upon her, lets a fear greater than her own, a more intolerable anguish, enter his heart even then.
"He is not dead," he says, quietly, forcing himself to be calm. Whereupon Lilian bursts into a storm of tears.
"Are you sure?" cries she; "is there no mistake? He looks so—so—like death," with a shuddering sigh. "Oh, what should I have done had he been killed?"
"Be happy, he is alive," says Guy, between his dry lips, misery making his tones cold. All his worst fears are realized. In spite of pretended indifference, it is plain to him that all her wayward heart has been given to her cousin. Her intense agitation, her pale agonized face, seem to him easy to read, impossible to misunderstand. As he rises from his knees, he leaves all hope behind him in possession of his wounded rival.
"Stay with him until I bring help: I shan't be a minute," he says, not looking at her, and presently returning with some rough contrivance that does duty for a stretcher, and a couple of laborers. They convey him home to Chetwoode, where they lay him, still insensible, upon his bed, quiet and cold as one utterly bereft of life.
Then the little doctor arrives, and the door of Chesney's chamber is closed upon him and Guy, and for the next half-hour those outside—listening, watching, hoping, fearing—have a very bad time of it.