He broke off in amazement. A slight figure had risen up suddenly from a settee in a dark corner; and a woman's face, wild-eyed and tragic, confronted them.
"Great Scott! Who is it?" said Lord Percy Davenant.
And "Chris!" exclaimed Hilda, at the same moment.
As for Chris, she stood a second, staring at them; then: "Trevor has turned me out, so I've come to you," she said her white lips moving stiffly. "I've nowhere else to go."
With the words she stumbled forward, feeling vaguely out before her as though she saw not. Hilda started towards her on the instant, caught her, folded warm arms about her, held her fast.
"My darling!" she said, and again, "My darling!"
But Chris heard not, nor saw, nor felt. She had reached the end of her strength, and black darkness had closed down upon her agony, blotting out all things. She sank senseless in her cousin's embrace….
It was long before they brought her back, so long that Hilda became frightened and dispatched her husband in the motor for a doctor, wholly forgetting her brother's expected visit in her anxiety.
Lord Percy ultimately returned with the local practitioner, whom he had dragged almost by force from the bedside of a patient ten miles away. He, too, had forgotten Jack, but remembered him as he set down the doctor, and whirled away again in a cloud of dust, leaving him to announce himself.
Chris had by that time recovered consciousness, in response to Hilda's strenuous efforts, but she had scarcely spoken a word. She lay on the sofa in the drawing-room, cold from head to foot, and shivering spasmodically at intervals. She drank the wine that Hilda brought her with shuddering docility; but it seemed to have no effect upon her. It was as if the blood had frozen at her very heart.