“I don’t deny it,” he said, beginning to feel himself over, and wincing. “But nothing serious, nothing broken—only bruises. Let’s get out of it. Where’s the child? All right?”
A crowd had quickly collected. There were exclamations, gestures, and presently a very Babel of grateful cries, which, to Wilbraham’s disgust, pursued them as he limped stiffly away.
“One child more or less,” he said grimly. “Can it matter?”
After they had gone a few steps he remarked: “I didn’t do much good. Who pulled it out?”
Miss Sandiland had a high bird-like voice. She broke into admiration of Teresa’s courage; Sylvia, recovering her speech, admired them both; Teresa, who had not yet spoken, began to share Wilbraham’s uneasy shyness, and to hurry on; Miss Sandiland, with a proper sense of leaving the lovers together, following her closely. They did not, either of them, know where they were going, but they found themselves in the piazza of the great church, and Mrs Brodrick came to meet them from its porch.
“What is the matter?” she asked, for Teresa’s face was still white.
“Nothing,” said the girl briefly. “But there might have been something.”
Miss Sandiland began the story, and Teresa slipped away into the darkness of the lower church. She went straight into its deepest gloom, and knelt, as the peasants kneel, on the stones, worn by the weight of countless sorrows. She had been very near death, and she knew it, but Sylvia had been nearer to what might have crushed the joy out of her life, and though she thought of the one, she thought a great deal more of the other deliverance.
Mrs Brodrick was quietly waiting for her when she came into the sunlight again, and put out her hand.
“My dear!” was all she said.