“Miss Cranstoun!”
“That is my name. Do you know me?”
“I knew you directly, by your remarkable likeness to your mother,” he answered, and then suddenly stopped and blushed very red.
For he had seen the look of astonishment in her face, and remembered that every one in Grayling supposed Miss Cranstoun to be the daughter of Lady Gwendolen, a rumor which, as he had never seen the young lady, he was not in a position to discredit, though he often wondered what had been the fate of the infant girl whom he himself had seen conveyed to her father’s house and sent away from thence in the nurse’s care, one winter’s morning eighteen years ago.
The mystery was solved now. She stood there before him, a slimmer, more fairy-like, and more refined version of her mother; even her voice, in its rich, soft intonation, recalled to his mind the unhappy Clare Lady Cranstoun.
“No one has ever called me like my mother before,” she was saying. “I did not know you had ever met her. She is a great invalid.”
“What can I do for you now?” he asked, to change the dangerous subject.
“A man from the stables here met me in the park,” she answered, her color rising high, “and told me of an accident to a gentleman who was staying at our house last night. I suppose you know all about it—about how it happened, I mean, and how the wound broke out again. You have just come from seeing him, have you not? How is he? Pray tell me!”
Dr. Ernest Netherbridge was a man of extremely observant mind, and he drew his own conclusions from the evident interest shown by the young lady before him for the handsome young giant upstairs.
“He is very feverish, and has a nasty wound in the shoulder, which has not been improved by the shaking and jolting he has gone through to-day. I understand that he was your father’s guest last night?”