CHAPTER XXII
SATON REASSERTS HIMSELF
Rochester asked only one question during those few days when he lay between life and death. He opened his eyes suddenly, and motioned to the doctor to stoop down.
“Who shot me?” he asked.
“It was an accident,” the doctor assured him, soothingly.
Rochester said no more, but his lips seemed to curl for a moment into the old disbelieving smile. Then the struggle began. In a week it was over. A magnificent constitution, and an unshattered nerve, triumphed. The doctors one by one took their departure. Their task was over. Rochester would recover.
“Who shot me?”
The doctor had seen no reason to keep silence, and this question of Rochester’s had created something like a sensation as it travelled backwards and forwards. Rochester had been shot in the left side, in the middle of a field, where no accident of his own causing seemed possible. One barrel only of his gun had been fired, and to account for that a cock pheasant lay dead within a few feet of him. The shooting-party were all old and experienced sportsmen. The gun which Rochester had left leaning against the gate was discovered exactly as he had left it there, loaded in both barrels. There was not the ghost of a clue.
Only Lois kept to her room for three days, until she could bear it no longer. Then she walked out a little way toward the woods, and met Saton. He recognised her with a shock. He himself, especially now it was known that Rochester would live, had rapidly recovered from the fit of horrors which had seized him on that night. It was not so with Lois. Her cheeks were ghastly pale, and her eyes beringed. She walked like one recovering from a long illness, and when she saw Saton she screamed.
He held out his hand, and noticed with swift comprehension her first instinctive withdrawal.