“He would be as wet as he is capable of being before you found him,” he said; “besides, he couldn’t use an umbrella on horseback; and even if you knew where he was and which road he was coming by, it’s a hundred to one you’d miss him in a night like this.”
“La! what a regiment of reasons!” she answered, with her short, irregular laugh. “I only wanted a reason for going out. As to being of use to Mr. Grant, ’twould be but a chance, of course; but so is everything for that matter.”
She did not persist in her intention, however, but began to move carelessly about the room, and made no answer to several remarks that her mother and Lancaster addressed to her.
When nearly half an hour had passed away, her bearing and aspect suddenly changed; she went swiftly out of the room, shutting the door behind her. Then the outside door was heard to open, and Marion’s step going down to the gate, which was likewise flung back; then, after a minute’s silence, the sound of voices, and Lancaster, peering out of the window, saw, by the aid of an accommodating flash of lightning, Marion and Mr. Grant (who was without his hat) coming up the paved way to the porch.
“What a strange thing!” he exclaimed. “How could she possibly have known he was coming?”
“Marion has wonderful ears,” said Mrs. Lockhart with a sigh, as if the faculty were in some way deleterious to the possessor of it. But Lancaster thought that something else besides fine hearing was involved in this matter.
The girl now came in, her cheeks flushed, her hair, face and shoulders wet, conducting Mr. Grant, with her arm under his. He was splashed and smeared with mud and looked very pale; but he smiled and said with his usual courteousness: “I am not going to spoil your carpet and chairs, dear madam. I do but show you my plight, like a truant schoolboy who has tumbled into the gutter, and then I retire for repairs.”
“No: you shall sit down here,” said Marion determinedly but quietly; and in despite of himself she led him to the stuffed easy chair which her mother had just quitted, and forced him into it. “Mr. Grant has had some hurt,” she added to the others; and to Lancaster, “Go up to his room and bring down his dressing-gown. Mother, get some water heated in the kitchen. I will attend to him.”
Her manner to the old man was full of delicate and sympathetic tenderness; to the others, of self-possessed authority. Lancaster went on his errand with a submissive docility that surprised himself. He had seen a great deal of Marion in the last few hours; but he was not sure that he had seen into her very far.
When he returned with the dressing-gown, Marion had got Mr. Grant’s coat off, and was wiping the mud from a bruised place on his right hand with her wetted handkerchief. “Nothing dangerous, thank God!” she was saying, in a soothing undertone, as Lancaster approached.