She got up, but she could scarcely stand. She had never fainted before, and she wondered at her own sensations. “What ails me?” she thought. She strained her eyes around, but there was no sign of the terrible man. She was quite sure that he had gone, and yet how could she be sure? He might have gone out to the road and be sitting beside it. A vivid recollection of tramps sitting beside that very road, as she had been driving past, came over her. She became quite positive that he was out on the road, and a terror of the road was over her. She looked behind her, and the sunny gleam of an open field came through the trees. The field was shaggy with blue asters and golden-rod gone to seed, and white tufts of immortelles. Charlotte stared through the trees at the field, and suddenly a man crossed the little sunny opening. A great joy swept over her; he was Randolph Anderson. Now she was sure that she was safe. She stumbled again to her feet, and ran weakly out of the oak grove. There was a low fence between the grove and the field, and when she reached that she stopped. She felt this to be insurmountable for her trembling limbs. “Oh, dear!” she said, aloud, and although the man was holding his butterfly-net cautiously over the top of a clump of asters so far away that it did not seem possible that he could hear her, he immediately looked up. Then he hastened towards her. As he drew near a look of concern deepened on his face. He had had an inkling at the first glimpse of her that something was wrong. He reached the fence and stood looking at her on the other side.
“I am afraid I can't get over,” Charlotte said, faintly. She never knew quite how she was over, lifted in some fashion, and Anderson stood close to her, looking at her with his face as white as hers.
“What is it?” he asked. “Are you ill, Miss Carroll? What is it?”
“I have been frightened,” said she. Without quite knowing what she did, she caught hold of his arm and clung to him tightly.
“What frightened you?” asked Anderson, fairly trembling himself and looking down at her.
“There was a man asleep in the grove, in there,” explained Charlotte, falteringly—she still felt faint and strange—“and—and—I sat down there, and did not see him, and then he—he woke up and—”
Anderson seized her arm in a fierce clutch. “What?” he cried. “Where is he? What? For God's sake!”
“He went away out in the road and did not seem to see—me. I sat still,” said Charlotte. Then she was very faint again, for he, too, frightened her a little.
Anderson caught her, supporting her, while he tore off his coat. Then he half carried her over to a ledge of rocks cropping out of the furzy gold-and-blue undergrowth, and sat down beside her there. Charlotte sat weakly where she was placed. She was deadly white and trembling. Anderson hesitated a moment, then he put an arm around her, removed her hat, and drew her head down on his shoulder.
“Now keep quiet a little while until you are better,” he said. “You are perfectly safe now. You say the man did not see you?”