“Push a handkerchief in his mouth,” cried Brand, suddenly. “A lady is coming.”
With right good-will I did as the doctor suggested.
Just then Carriston returned. I don’t want to raise home tempests, yet I must say he was accompanied by the most beautiful creature my eyes have ever lighted upon. True, she was pale as a lily—looked thin and delicate, and her face bore traces of anxiety and suffering, but for all that she was beautiful—too beautiful for this world, I thought, as I looked at her. She was clinging in a half-frightened, half-confiding way to Carriston, and he—happy fellow!—regardless of our presence, was showering down kisses on her sweet pale face. Confound it! I grow quite romantic as I recall the sight of those lovers.
A most curious young man, that Carriston! He came to us, the lovely girl on his arm, without showing a trace of his recent excitement.
“Let us go now,” he said, as calmly as if he had been taking a quiet evening drive. Then he turned to me.
“Do you think, Mr. Fenton, you could without much trouble get the dog-cart up to the house?”
I said I would try to do so.
“But what about these people?” asked Brand.
Carriston gave them a contemptuous glance. “Leave them alone,” he said. “They are but the tools of another—him I cannot touch. Let us go.”