“Sit down! Sit down! Sit down!” a hundred hoarse voices thundered at her; but in her fear and bewilderment she gave no heed, but with a maddened shriek sprang out upon the ground.
And on dashed Hamilton’s horses, eluding every outstretched hand that would have arrested their terrible speed, while like a grim statue of despair he leaned back, clinging with all his force to the reins as they bore him on to destruction.
Still as death lay Eva upon the ground where she fell. Her forehead had grazed a stone and was cut and bleeding; her senses had fled.
Some one recognized the half-dazed physician from the great hospital, and they almost dragged him from his cutter in their mad haste.
“Excuse us, doctor, but the young lady will bleed to death in the snow unless you hasten!” and there in the wintry weather he stood in the snow by her side again—the bride who had discarded him at the altar with that cruel sentence: “I will never forgive you!”
Had she died in her reckless plunge from the sleigh and waked up in another world?
It almost seemed so to Eva when she sighed and opened her dark, wondering eyes upon the face bending anxiously over her—the fair, handsome face with its dark violet eyes that haunted her daily thoughts and nightly dreams, the face she never could forget.
Soft, cool fingers were touching her brow like a caress, smoothing back the golden rings of sunny hair, while he deftly bound his own handkerchief about her head, saying to the eager bystanders:
“It is not at all dangerous—only a surface wound, and I will take her home and put a few stitches in it to make it all right. See, she is already reviving. Permit me, Miss Somerville,” and with a little masterful air he lifted the slight form in his arms and bore her to the cutter, wrapping her closely in the warm fur robes, and saying, as he took his place by her side:
“I will soon take you home now, and if you feel faint you may lean against me while I drive.”