The onward sweep of the mass of vehicles had been instantaneously checked. The road was clear for some rods before her and in the centre of this open space lay—a broken bicycle.
A little group of men crowded close about some central object on the ground. Women were wringing their hands and weeping hysterically, and one woman—it was Mrs. Newton—was crying wildly,
"Let me go to her! Let me go!"
The circle of men upon the ground made way, and then Nan saw what it was around which they knelt.
She gave a quick, fierce cry of pain. The little governess lay quite still and motionless. Her eyes were closed; her face was white as marble. All her bright hair was lying loose about her temples—and it was streaked with blood.
CHAPTER XIX
IN MISS BLAKE'S ROOM
Nan never forgot that scene. It seemed to her afterward, that even in the midst of the horror that almost stupefied her and made her blind, it had been indelibly photographed upon her brain to the merest detail with torturing distinctness.
She could see Mrs. Newton's drawn, livid face, and the stern, set expression of the men who gathered about in knots here and there discussing the accident in whispers, or arranging the best means of getting back to town. A doctor, who happened to be near at hand, had sprung forward at the first moment of alarm, and he and a strange, kind-faced woman were together bending over the prostrate form between them, while over all arched the high dome of the blue October sky, beyond them stretched the level road, narrowing in the distance to a point that seemed to pierce the sea, and on either side spread the branches of bordering maple trees, each shining brilliant and gorgeous In the autumn sunlight.