He was obliged to acknowledge the justice of this reminder, but murmured with something of his sweet, mischievous smile: “You have always a reasonable answer, Miss Morville!”
She returned the smile, but did not answer, merely going to the door into the dressing-room to summon Turvey to relieve her watch. She stayed only until she had seen the Earl swallow his sedative draught, and then, directing Turvey to remove two of the pillows that were propping him up, bade her patient sleep well, and went away to her own bedchamber.
She had not left it when Dr. Malpas arrived, before nine o’clock, and it was Lord Ulverston who escorted the doctor to the Earl’s room. He found the patient, as Miss Morville had prophesied, very much more comfortable, though still very weak.
“Weak, my lord! Ay, no wonder!” the doctor said, taking the Earl’s pulse. “A trifle of fever, too, which was to be expected. I shall not cup you, however, for I think you will go on very well. But a bad business! I cannot conceive how it can have come about! There are poachers enough in the district, but they are not in general so careless as to fire across the roads — no, and I have never known them to go about their work in daylight before! I was speaking about it last night to Sir Geoffrey Acton, whom I was obliged to visit — just a touch of his old enemy, the gout! — and he gives it as his opinion that you might have been shot by one of these discharged soldiers we hear so much about. I daresay many of them are great rascals, and, you know, once they are turned loose upon the world, there is no saying what they will be up to.”
Lord Ulverston uttered an impatient exclamation, but the Earl engaged his silence by a look, and himself said: “Very true.”
The doctor, who had by this time laid bare the wound, seemed to be delighted with it. “Excellent! it could not be better!” he declared. “As clean a wound as you would wish for, and has not touched the lung! I can tell your lordship, though, that it was a near-run thing! Ay, you had bled so freely by the time your man got you home that if it had not been for Miss Morville’s presence of mind and resolution, you might well have died before I had reached your side. She is a very good girl, and one that has a head on her shoulders besides. None of your squeaks and swoons at the sight of blood for her!”
“By Jupiter, yes!” the Viscount said. “I don’t know what we should have been at without her, Ger, for a gorier sight I’ve seldom seen, and how to stop the bleeding was more than I knew!”
“Miss Morville is a very remarkable female,” replied Gervase. “I am sorry, though, that she should have been confronted by such a hideous spectacle as I must have presented.”
“Lord, she made nothing of that! It was her ladyship who went off into a swoon, right at the head of the stairs, when she saw you carried up!” The Viscount gave a chuckle. “There was I, clean distracted, and telling Miss Morville to come to her ladyship, and all she said was that I should call her maid, for she had something more important to attend to! I was ready to have murdered her, for, y’know, Ger, swooning females ain’t in my line, but when I saw how cleverly she set to work on you I was bound to forgive her!”
At that moment a gentle knock fell on the door. Turvey moved to open it, and ushered in Miss Morville herself. The Viscount said gaily: “Ah, here she is! Come in, ma’am! I have been telling St. Erth what a stout heart you have! And here is the doctor saying that you don’t squeak and swoon at the sight of blood!”