"Papa," she barely gasped.
"He has met with an accident—a second apoplectic fit. I found him lying in Brithlow Wood. He had fallen from his horse. Mr. Green is fetching him here in his chaise. They will arrive presently. You had better have his room prepared, and I—will I ride for your physician myself?"
She leaned against a tree, sick and faint. He made a step toward her, but she rallied and motioned him off.
"No," she said, "let me be! Don't go, Sir Everard—remain here. I will send a servant for the doctor. Oh, I dreaded this! I warned him when he left this afternoon, but he wanted to see you so much."
She left him and hurried into the house, dispatched a man for the doctor, and prepared her father's room.
In fifteen minutes the doctor's pony-chaise drove up. He and the baronet and the butler assisted the stricken and insensible man up to his room, and laid him upon the bed from which he was never more to rise.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE CAPTAIN'S LAST NIGHT.
A young crescent moon rose in the bleak sky; on the shore the flood-tide beat its hoarse refrain, and in his chamber Harold Godfrey Hunsden lay dying.
They knew it—the silent watchers in that somber room—his daughter, and all. She knelt by the bedside, her face hidden, still, tearless, stunned. Sir Everard, the doctor, the rector, silent and sad, stood around.