The young doctor looked at her pitifully.
“I cannot tell,” he replied; “it depends upon how far the bullet has penetrated. It is unfortunate that he should have been shot in such a dangerous part of the body. How did it happen?”
A groom now came up and told a hasty tale.
“The Squire called me this morning,” he said, “and told me to go into his study and bring him out his new fowling-piece, which had been sent from London a few days ago. I brought it just as it was. He took it without noticing it much. I was about to turn round and say to him, ‘It is at full cock—perhaps you don’t know, sir,’ but I thought, of course, he had loaded it and prepared it himself; and the next minute he was climbing a hedge. I heard a report, and he was lying just where you found him.”
The question which immediately followed this recital was, “Who had loaded the gun?”
Another doctor was summoned, and another telegraphed for from London, and great was the agitation and misery. By and by Audrey found herself alone. She could scarcely understand her own sensations. In the first place, she was absolutely useless. Her mother was absorbed in the sickroom; the servants were all occupied—even Read was engaged as temporary nurse until a trained one should arrive. Poor Audrey put on her hat and went out.
“If only my dear Miss Sinclair were here!” she thought. “Even if Evelyn were here it would be better than nothing. Oh, no wonder we quite forget Evelyn in a time of anguish like the present!”
Then a fearful thought stabbed her to the heart.
“If anything happens——” She could not get her lips to form the word she really thought of. Once again she used the conventional phrase:
“If anything happens, Evelyn will be mistress here.”