"If you please, ma'am----" she began.
"What is it, Harriet? Tell me at once?" And Mrs. Beauchamp clutched the back of her chair for support, while her face assumed an ashen hue, and poor Elsa felt inclined to scream.
"A man's come from Osmington, from Mr. Howell's place, ma'am, to say as there's been an accident, ma'am, and Miss Monica's leg is hurt. It were something to do with one of these motors, ma'am, but he says he was told to say it weren't by no means serious."
A tinge of colour came into Mrs. Beauchamp's cheeks, as the servant reached the end of her sentence; she had dreaded she knew not what.
"Is the man here, Harriet? Have him taken to the morning-room, and I will see him," she faltered.
"Oh! please may we hear too?" asked Elsa, with quivering lips.
And the old lady, reading the alarm in the girl's tense young face, said: "Of course, my dear."
By dint of much questioning they got some idea of what had occurred; and, relieved to a certain extent by having definite news of her grandchild, Mrs. Beauchamp made speedy arrangements for her conveyance home.
In a very few minutes the brougham was at the door, and into it stepped Mrs. Beauchamp and the two girls, followed by the reliable Barnes, who was always to be depended upon in an emergency.
Elsa and Amethyst would dearly have liked to go as far as the Howells', so as to know exactly how Monica was, but when Mrs. Beauchamp ordered the coachman to put them down at Dr. Franklyn's, on his way through the town, they did not dare to make the suggestion.