'I didn't find it. I should be in the wood still if it was not for Jack—Jack found me, and carried me across the Hanger on his back, and took me up to his cottage, and took off my clothes and dried them, and gave me some brandy in a teaspoon, and then wrapped me in a bear-skin, and carried me all the way here.'
'How good of him!' said Ida; 'and how I should like to thank him for his kindness!'
'He doesn't want to be thanked. He hates girls,' said Vernon, with perfect frankness. 'He just gave me into Rogers' arms and walked off. But I shall go and thank him to-morrow morning, and I shall take him my onyx breast-pin,—the one you gave me last Christmas, mother. You don't mind, do you?'
'No, dear; you may give him anything you like. But I think he would rather have a sovereign—or a nice warm overcoat for the winter. What would be the good of an onyx pin to him?'
'What would be the good of it! Why, he would keep it for my sake, of course!' answered Vernie, with a grand air.
Vernon had no appetite for the chicken sandwiches, or inclination for Madeira negus. He took a few sips of the latter to please his womankind, but he could eat nothing. He had fasted all day, and now, in his over excited state, he had no power to eat. Lady Palliser took fright at this, and sent off for the family doctor, that fatherly counsellor in whose wisdom she had such confidence. The boy was evidently feverish, his eyes were too bright, his cheeks flushed. He was restless, and unable to sleep off his fatigue in that placid slumber of childhood which brings healing with its rythmical ebb and flow.
The dinner-gong sounded, and Brian was still missing, but at half-past eight he came in, and walked straight to the drawing-room, where Ida was sitting alone. Neither she nor her stepmother had sat down to dinner. Lady Palliser was in her boy's room, waiting for the doctor.
'Oh, Brian, thank God you are safe!' said his wife, as he came slowly into the room, and sank into a chair. 'What a scare you have given us all!'
'Did you think I was drowned, or that I had cut my throat?' he asked, sneeringly. 'I don't think either event would have mattered much to anyone in this house.'
His manner was entirely different from what it had been last night. His words were cool and deliberate, his expression moody, but in nowise irrational.