“It must have been a stray shot,” corroborated Cullen, strong in his conviction that no one could deliberately harm such a pretty young thing.
The old doctor said no more; but in his heart he did not accept the theory of the stray shot.
Something in Annette’s eyes, so startled, so grieved, like a wounded fawn’s, when he questioned her, had half betrayed to him the secret she was loyally guarding.
“The girl is shielding some one—a jealous lover, maybe—but, after the manner of these self-immolating women, she will never betray her secret,” he thought testily, as he and Cullen carried her gently to the coupé, so that she could be removed to her home.
Poor little Annette, who had started forth so gayly scarce an hour ago, how different was her home-coming, and what a shock the mother’s heart received when they brought her pale darling in with the gory bloodstains defacing her new silk gown!
“Who has done this dreadful thing?” her mother cried; and Doctor Bowers could only tell her what he had heard:
“It was a stray shot.”
They bore her to her little white bed, and for a week she was very, very ill, the result of shock as much as from her wound. Fever and delirium set in, and sometimes she raved of her lover, Ray, beseeching him to come back to her, but never by the least hint betraying the secret of his terrible crime.
When she began to convalesce it was the same way. Annette gave no hint of having seen Ray Dering, even when her mother questioned her, and told her of his going after her to Sea View.
Her dark eyes assumed a look of plaintive wonder, and she faltered: