"Bad enough, certainly. You can imagine how it harrowed all of us, and especially the women. Cousin Janet fainted and had to be carried up to the house; and Miss Elsa was the only one of the young women who wasn't perfectly helpless. Colonel Craigmiles was our stand-by; he knew just what to do, and how to do it. He is a wonderful man, Mr. Ballard."
"He is—in more ways than a casual observer would suspect." Ballard suffered so much of his thought to set itself in words. To minimise the temptation to say more he turned his back upon the accident and accounted for himself and his presence at Castle 'Cadia.
"Bromley was pretty well tired out when Otto came down with the car, and I offered to ride around and make his excuses. We broke an engine bolt on the road: otherwise I should have been here two hours earlier. You say Wingfield is recovering? I wonder if I could see him for a few minutes, before I go back to camp?"
Bigelow offered to go up-stairs and find out; and Ballard waited in the silence of the deserted library for what seemed like a long time. And when the waiting came to an end it was not Bigelow who parted the portières and came silently to stand before his chair; it was the king's daughter.
"You have heard?" she asked, and her voice seemed to come from some immeasurable depth of anguish.
"Yes. Is he better?"
"Much better; though he is terribly weak and shaken." Then suddenly: "What brought you here—so late?"
He explained the ostensible object of his coming, and mentioned the cause of the delay. She heard him through without comment, but there was doubt and keen distress and a great fear in the gray eyes when he was permitted to look into their troubled depths.
"If you are telling me the truth, you are not telling me all of it," she said, sinking wearily into one of the deepest of the easy-chairs and shading the tell-tale eyes with her hand.
"Why shouldn't I tell you all of it?" he rejoined evasively.