Looking up into the physician’s strong, calm face, Hilary felt as if a load of care had been suddenly lifted from her shoulders. He greeted her with more than his usual cordiality, understanding well enough how sore her heart must be. Then he knelt down beside the mattress and looked with keen anxiety at his son.
“Will there be any risk in having a light?” he asked.
The Vicar thought not, and, producing a tinder-box, began to strike a flint and steel and to kindle the lantern that had been brought from the house.
Then when the light fell on the white face drawn with pain, the doctor regretted that he had not brought Gabriel’s mother, for not even at Notting Hill had he seemed so near death.
Hilary saw the change in his manner and her heart sank. Yet it comforted her a little when Dr. Harford proceeded to examine the shattered arm, for surely, she argued to herself, had there been no hope he would have left his son’s last moments undisturbed.
“I did the best I could for him in the orchard,” said the Vicar; “but fear it was but rough-and-ready treatment.”
“The duel would have been enough to defeat the most skilful surgery,” said the Doctor; “and clearly the bone must have been broken as he fell. But he hath great rallying power, and I don’t despair of him yet.”
On those words Hilary stayed her failing heart all through that terrible night, while Gabriel passed from one fainting fit to another, and it seemed as if the angel of death hovered above him ready at any moment to bear him away from her.
At length towards daybreak he slept for a time, and woke with a look of renewed life in his face which cheered them.
“The despatches?” he asked, looking from his father to the Vicar.