"It's all right, sweet! Don't be frightened! It's all right, sweet! Don't be frightened!"
And Rosamund was saying over and over, on sobbing breath, "O Grace! Poor Grace! O Grace!"
They laid her on a bed and undressed her. The poor cut feet were soiled with blood and seemed frozen; the forehead beneath the pale strands of hair—those pathetic strands of the woman in whom pride and vanity are dead—was cut and bruised; on her body they found larger bruises. They bathed her, and wrapped her in clean linen, and made her as comfortable as they could. Aunt Sue and Eleanor exchanged looks, and shook their heads. They sent Matt after the doctor. Then Timmy called out, and Eleanor went to him. Aunt Sue said something about more hot water, and descended to the kitchen.
Rosamund knelt beside the bed, and presently Grace fluttered back to a dim consciousness.
"Miss Rose! Miss Rose!" were her first words, uttered in a tone of fright.
"Yes, dear! I am here," said Rosamund, laying one of her cool hands on Grace's forehead.
Grace closed her eyes as if satisfied. "I had to come," she whispered. "It wasn't only for me."
XVI
The doctor promptly, in his most professional manner, turned Rosamund out of the room as soon as he got there. He preferred the old colored woman even to Eleanor as assistant; and he showed no sign of remembering that night in the Allen house when Rosamund had fought beside him, through the heavy hours, for a woman's life. When he closed the door of Grace's room upon her, she was keenly hurt; she could not know that while he worked over poor Grace he was recalling every moment of that earlier scene, viewing it now through the glamor of his later knowledge of her.