“Thank God you are here, Randall,” she said, leading the way into another room. “Tom will tell you of what has happened. I will return as soon as I can.”
“How is Captain Marston?” asked Raymond, as she stood for a moment with her hand on the handle of the door.
“Still unconscious. Mrs. Marston is with him.” She paused, and then turned her dark and beautiful tear-dimmed eyes to Frewen: “Tom, perhaps this gentleman might be able to do something. Will he come in and see?”
Raymond drew him aside. “Go in and see the poor fellow. He can't last long—his skull is fractured.”
Frewen followed Mrs. Raymond into the large room, and saw lying on her own bed the figure of a man whose features were of the pallor of death. His head was bound up, and kneeling by his side, with her eyes bent upon his closed lids, was a woman, or rather a girl of twenty-two or twenty-three years of age. As, at the sound of footsteps, she raised her pale, agonised face, something like a gleam of hope came into it.
“Are you a doctor?” she asked in a trembling whisper.
The seaman shook his head respectfully. “No, madam; I would I were.”
He leant over the bed, and looked at the still, quiet face of the man, whom he could see was in the prime of life, and whose regular, clear-cut features showed both refinement and strength of character.
“He still breathes,” whispered the poor wife.
“Yes, so I see,” said Frewen, as he rose. Then he asked Mrs. Raymond a few questions as to the nature of the wound, and learned that in addition to a fractured skull a pistol bullet had entered at the back of the neck.