Sir Richard looked at his watch.
"An hour and a half, you say?"
"More than that. Let me think. It was twelve—yes, it was twelve. More you see, sir, than that. Tell me, sir. Tell me at once what can be done. Speak—oh speak to me. What will you do?"
"I don't know, Miss Wilmot."
With a deep sigh Arabella fainted.
It was seldom indeed that, even amid his adventurous life, the magistrate found a circumstance that affected him so strongly as that which Arabella Wilmot had related to him. For a short time, even he, with all his powers of rapid thought, and with all the means and appliances which natural skill and practice had given him to meet any emergency, could not think of any mode of escape from the peculiarly awkward position into which this frightfully imprudent step of Johanna had plunged him.
"My good girl," he said. "Oh, she has fainted."
He rung a hand-bell, and, when a man appeared in answer to the summons, he said—
"Is Mrs. Long within?"