“That he should be brought here. Quite right, Wilberforce. Is there a room ready? Has Mr. Pendrill been sent for?”
“The groom has gone this twenty minutes. Living or dead, he must have a doctor to him. The maids are getting the east room ready, yet I doubt if he can be living after such a fall.”
“He may not have fallen over the cliff. He may have been scaling it, and have dropped from but a small height. See that everything likely to be needed is ready. He may be here almost immediately now.”
She went up to the bed-room herself, to see if it were ready should there be need. It was probably only some poor tramp or fisherman who had met with the accident—no matter, he should be tended at Trevlyn, he should lie in its most comfortable guest-chamber, he should have every care that wealth could supply. Monica knew too well the dire results that might follow a slip down those hard, treacherous cliffs not to feel peculiarly tender and solicitous over another victim.
The steady tramp of feet ascending the stairs and approaching the room where she stood, roused Monica to the knowledge that the injured man was not dead, and that they were bringing him up to be tended and nursed as she had directed. The door was pushed open; six men carried in their burden upon an improvised stretcher, and laid it just as it was upon the bed. Monica stepped forward, and then started, growing a little pale; for she recognised in the death-like rigid face before her the well-known countenance of Conrad Fitzgerald.
She could not look without a shudder at that shattered frame, and Wilberforce shook her head gravely, marvelling that he yet breathed. None save professional hands dared touch him, so distorted and dislocated was every limb; and yet by one of those strange coincidences, not altogether uncommon in cases of accident, the beautiful face was entirely untouched, not marred by a scratch or contusion. Death-like unconsciousness had set its seal upon those chiselled, marble features, and had wiped from them every trace of passion or of vice.
Tom Pendrill was amongst them long before they looked for him. He had met the messenger not far from Trevlyn, and had come at once. He turned Monica out of the room with a stern precipitancy that perplexed her somewhat, as did also the expression of his face, which she did not understand. He shut himself up with his patient, retaining the services of Wilberforce and one of the men.
It was two hours before she saw him again.