‘I don’t think I fainted,’ she remarked thoughtfully; ‘but I shall never forget the coldness of that water when my horse plunged into that hole.’
‘I suppose you’re not liable to colds or coughs much?’ asked Michael, with apparent indifference.
‘Oh dear, no! I shall be all right, if I can but wring some of the water from my habit. It is so heavy with it.’
She stood up, feeling quite strong; and while Michael screwed the top on to his brandy-flask, she raised her soaking riding habit, and wrung out the water as well as she could.
‘It is too bad that you should have been troubled about this,’ she said, suddenly stopping in her operations, as it all at once flashed into her mind that he was waiting there entirely on her account. ‘Is my groom there? William!’
‘Yes, miss!’
‘You should not have ridden away and left me. If you had waited a moment, I should have been all right, and Dr. Langstroth need not have been detained.’
‘Do not scold him,’ said Michael, in a low voice. ‘The poor lad is frightened out of his senses. He thought you were drowned, and wished for medical assistance. His promptitude in calling for it, and getting rid of responsibility——’
‘The responsibility of this insane expedition is mine,’ said Eleanor, shortly, beginning to realise the situation. ‘But, indeed, Dr. Langstroth, do not let me keep you here in the cold. We cannot miss the road again, and I am ashamed to have troubled you so much.’
‘Do not be distressed on my account,’ said Michael, calmly. He had restored the flask to his pocket, and now he picked up the gauntlets which she had pulled off and thrown to the ground, and stood watching her, in the ever-deepening twilight, in silence, for some little time after he had spoken. He felt something unreal and dreamlike in the whole situation—in the shadowy woman’s figure, with its quick, graceful, movements; in the surrounding dark, the rushing stream, the sharp night air. Eleanor said nothing to him, for she felt somewhat embarrassed. She did not wish to trouble him, but when she thought of that five miles of a ride to Bradstane, in the dark, with no guide but William, her courage did not exactly rise. She would have felt very well satisfied to be ordered by a competent authority to hold her tongue and do as she was bidden, and it was this, in effect, which Michael did tell her when he next spoke.