To those nearest to her Fanny said in a low tone, “He is her lover, and the man who saved the other coach as she has saved us.”
It scarcely took an instant for this to become known to all, and Tom was at once nearly as much an object of interest as Inez, and a way was made for him to go to her.
“Why, it is Inez! How came she here?” he asked in a perfectly steady voice, but his face was white and his hands shook as he knelt by the still unconscious girl, calling her name and rubbing her cold face.
At the sound of his voice she opened her eyes and looked at him with an expression of loathing and despair.
“Oh, Tom, Tom,” she cried, and the anguish in her voice haunted Tom to his dying day.
“I am here, Inez,” he said, very tenderly. “What can I do for you?”
She made no reply, but looked up at Fanny as if asking what she knew or suspected. Fanny suspected nothing, and her tears fell fast and hot upon Inez’s face, which she kissed again and again until a faint color came back to it; the heart beats were less rapid, and she tried to get up. Every one was ready to help her, Tom with the rest, but she motioned them all aside, and standing erect said with an effort to smile, “I have made quite a scene. My strength gave out at last. I am all right now. What became of my hat?”
Three or four hurried to bring it to her, while Tom said to Fanny, “Where is yours?”
It had fallen off in her excitement and lay at some distance from her where it had been stepped on two or three times and badly crushed. Tom picked it up, brushed it very carefully, straightened it as well as he could and then put it on Fanny’s head, saying, as he did so, “I think it is all right.”
He seemed much more cheerful than at first, and patted Nero on the head, saying, “You here, too? I wonder you did not go after the ruffian.”