'Oh! my leg, my leg; you have broken my leg!'
'Let me help you up.'
'Don't touch me,' said Olive, attempting to rise; but the moment she put her right foot to the ground she shrieked with pain, and fell again.
'Well, if you are going to take it in that way, you may remain where you are, and I can't go and ring them up at Brookfield. I don't think there will be much eloping done to-night, so farewell.'
XXVI
About ten o'clock on the night of Olive's elopement, Alice knocked tremblingly at her mother's door.
'Mother,' she said, 'Olive is not in her room, nor yet in the house; I have looked for her everywhere.'
'She is downstairs with her father in the studio,' said Mrs. Barton; and, signing to her daughter to be silent, she led her out of hearing of Barnes, who was folding and putting some dresses away in the wardrobe.
'I have been down to the studio,' Alice replied in a whisper.
'Then I am afraid she has run away with Captain Hibbert. But we shall gain nothing by sending men out with lanterns and making a fuss; by this time she is well on her way to Dublin. She might have done better than Captain Hibbert, but she might also have done worse. She will write to us in a few days to tell us that she is married, and to beg of us to forgive her.'