Hilary’s hand dropped from the bridle, and a short exclamation of pain escaped his lips as his arm dropped by his side. Through the sleeve of his shooting-coat near the shoulder the blood oozed out, and began rapidly pouring down his arm. Lord Carthew sprang to his assistance.
“I am shot,” Hilary said. “It serves me right for interfering with a woman. Carthew, let’s get out of this.”
The girl, whose horse had dashed on ahead as soon as Hilary’s restraining hand was withdrawn, returned now, and uttered a little cry of horror as she saw that Hilary was wounded.
“How did it happen?” she asked breathlessly.
“Some one in the woods over there shot him in the shoulder as he was holding your horse,” returned Lord Carthew. “I must get him to the nearest inn as soon as possible.”
“No,” she exclaimed, impulsively. “Look how the blood is pouring from his shoulder! It is all my fault. We have a doctor staying in the house. Your friend must be taken home.”
“Home! Where?”
“To the Chase. I am Miss Cranstoun.”
Even in the hurry of the moment and the anxiety he felt on his friend’s account, for Hilary was very pale and evidently in pain, Lord Carthew could hardly refrain from a look of surprise at the girl’s statement. She was so utterly unlike his ideal of what “the product of a union between a Douglas and a Cranstoun” would be. No “long, limp, watery-eyed fairness” was here, but a small face, eloquent in its every line, a sensitive white skin, mobile red lips whose expression changed constantly, and eyes more wonderful even by this imperfect light than any he had ever seen, eyes strangely luminous, dilated pupils, and a border to the iris of so dark a blue that it seemed almost black. He could not have said at that moment whether she was adorably beautiful or only supremely interesting. She had captured and chained his imagination, and her every movement seemed to him the perfection of grace. Without any assistance she sprang off her horse, and taking his bridle, approached Hilary timidly.
“If you feel faint,” she said, “will you not mount my horse, and let me lead him to the house? Indeed, I don’t think you can walk. And may I try to bind your shoulder?”