Lady Frances and Audrey were at breakfast—Lady Frances very pale, and Audrey with traces of her violent weeping the night before still on her face—when a servant burst in great terror and excitement into the room.
“Oh, your ladyship,” he exclaimed, “the Squire is lying in the copse badly shot with his own gun! One of the grooms is with him, and Jones has gone for the doctor, and I came at once to tell your ladyship.”
Poor Lady Frances in her agony scarcely knew what she was doing. Audrey asked a frenzied question, and soon the two were bending over the stricken man. The Squire was shot badly in the side. A new fowling-piece lay a yard or two away.
“How did it happen?” said Lady Frances. “What can it mean?”
Audrey knelt by her father, took his icy-cold hand in hers, and held it to her lips. Was he dead?
As he lay there the young girl for the first time in all her life learned how passionately, how dearly she loved him. What would life be without him? In some ways she was nearer to her mother than to her father, but just now, as he lay looking like death itself, he was all in all to her.
“Oh, when will the doctor come?” said Lady Frances, raising her haggard face. “Oh, he is bleeding to death—he is bleeding to death!”
With all her knowledge—and it was considerable—with all her common-sense, on which she prided herself, Lady Frances knew very little about illness and still less about wounds. She did not know how to stop the bleeding, and it was well the doctor, a bright-faced young man from the neighboring village, was soon on the spot. He examined the wounds, looked at the gun, did what was necessary to stop the immediate bleeding, and soon the Squire was carried on a hastily improvised litter back to his stately home.
An hour ago in the prime of life, in the prime of strength; now, for all his terrified wife and daughter could know, he was already in the shadow of death.
“Will he die, doctor?” asked Audrey.