“Bring salts! water! something, Miss Black—follow me, Lady O’Shane.”
“When I’m hardly able—your wife! Sir Ulick, you might,” said Lady O’Shane, as she tottered on, “you might, I should have thought—”
“No time for such thoughts, my dear,” interrupted he. “Sit down on the steps—there, she is better now—now what is all this?”
“I am not to speak,” said Miss Black.
Lady O’Shane began to say how Mr. Ormond had burst in, covered with blood, and seized the keys of the gates.
“The keys!” But he had no time for that thought. “Which way did he go?”
“I don’t know; I gave him the keys of both gates.”
The two entrances were a mile asunder. Sir Ulick looked for footsteps on the grass. It was a fine moonlight night. He saw footsteps on the path leading to the gardener’s house. “Stay here, ladies, and I will bring you intelligence as soon as possible.”
“This way, Sir Ulick—they are coming,” said Miss Annaly, who had now recovered her presence of mind.
Several persons appeared from a turn in the shrubbery, carrying some one on a hand-barrow—a gentleman on horseback, with a servant and many persons walking. Sir Ulick hastened towards them; the gentleman on horseback spurred his horse and met him.