“Is he ill?” she queried on, and her voice was clear and hard. “What has happened? Please do not give me your news in little bits, Mr. Ambleton; I prefer it all at once.”
“Mark has had an accident; he is very ill.”
“Will he die?” asked Christina.
For the second time something childlike stole over her. She was, after all, very young, and whatever her faults had been, she was now face to face with tragedy, and Valentine remembered this, and remembered her youth, and in this moment he was very near to forgiving her her faults.
He answered her in the same simple way.
“You must try not to look for the worst. Mark is young. We must hope.”
“What has happened?” Christina asked again.
And he told her tersely the story of that same day; how Sir Mark, it seemed, had gone to some club grounds near London to play a game of polo with one or two of his friends, in order to try a pony he had just bought, and how he had been unfortunately struck on the head in a close scrimmage, and been thrown and dragged, the pony taking fright, and racing off with its senseless burden a considerable distance before it could be stopped.
“Mark lies at the clubhouse. He has had every attention, and three doctors have seen him. Happily his companions thought of sending to us, and I have hastened to you without loss of an hour. I thought I might tell this better than any written message, but I am clumsy at this sort of work. You must forgive me. I hoped to have softened things a little.”
“I am no coward,” Christina said. Her brain was revolving rapidly. She knew that her husband would die, perhaps he was already dead. This gave her no heartache, since for many a week now she realized that she hated this man she had married, hated him thoroughly. But death robbed her of more than a husband. It took from her power and wealth, and worse than this, it restored to those whom she had dominated, all that had once been theirs, morally, if not actually.