“Barbara!” he cried. “My poor girl, must you hear it all?”
She was looking at him, her eyes burning beneath her long curved lashes, the red of her under-lip caught in her white teeth.
“Go on,” she said quietly. “Someone will have to tell me. I—would rather hear it from—you.”
The sweat of agony glistened on Jarvis’s forehead.
“If I must,” he said hoarsely. “It was an accident, Barbara. It would never have happened if David had not been excited, wild with success; Bamber attacked him first, without due provocation, it would seem, and Whitcomb retaliated—struck him, in self-defence.”
Barbara heard his voice as if from a great distance. She seemed to herself to be drifting away on a sea of strange dreams. Then she roused suddenly to find herself supported by Jarvis’s arm. He was holding a cup of water to her lips. She sat up, her face white and wan, her hands clutching the arms of her chair.
“You were saying——” she murmured.
“I ought to have told you in the beginning,” he reproached himself, “Bamber was not killed by the blow; but he fell and—struck his head against the edge of a stall.”
“And David?” she breathed.
“The girl dragged him away from the scene of the accident, and he—escaped. You know he had a fast horse.”