She swooned again and Caius dragged her away from the perilous spot and renewed his efforts to revive her.
How long it was before he succeeded she could never tell, or how, when at last consciousness returned, she made her way to her pony, untethered him and got upon his back.
She left him to his own guidance, and he took the right road for home.
She seemed to see nothing but Kenneth lying cold and dead at the foot of the precipice, to know nothing but that he was gone from her forever, and that Lyttleton, the man she had once loved, was his murderer.
The pony stopped at the gate; Marian lifted her head.
What, who was that coming slowly and with limping, halting gait to meet her from the other direction?
She looked again, and a cry of joy, so intense that it was near akin to pain, burst from her pallid lips.
Torn, bruised, scratched, disheveled, clothing hanging in tatters, the difficult, awkward, evidently painful and toilsome movement, as different as possible from his accustomed free, manly, energetic carriage, it was yet, without doubt, Kenneth himself.
Caius bounded toward him with a joyous bark of recognition, and Marian sprang to the ground and rushed with outstretched arms to meet him, crying, "O, Kenneth, Kenneth, is it, can it be you? Oh, I thought—I thought—"
The rest was lost in a burst of weeping, as she clasped him close, then, holding him off, gazed shudderingly into his face, so bruised, wan and bloody that she might well have doubted if it were indeed he.