"Here, Claud," said the lady, with a laugh, "is your adventure at last! Make the most of it."
"This is the third time you have promised me an adventure. If this proves to be as futile as the other two, I shall turn it up, and go home. I have had too many disappointments—they begin to tell on my nerves. Only a girl begging, is it?"
"Hush!" cried Lady Mabel, laughingly holding up a finger to her brother; and by this time Elaine, crimson, trembling, on the verge of tears, was at the carriage door.
The Honorable Claud Cranmer's eyes fell on the girlish figure, and took in everything in an instant. He thought her the most beautiful girl he had ever beheld; and beautiful she was in her passion and her excitement.
Her hair-pins had all been scattered freely along the road as she ran—the huge plait of her deep gold hair hung down her back half uncoiled. It had been all loosened by her vehement motion, so that it framed her lovely face in picturesque disorder. The most exquisite carnation glowed in her transparent skin, crystal tears swam in her large eyes, her whole face was alight and quivering with feeling, her ivory throat heaved as if it would burst.
Never in his life had he seen anything so totally unconventional, never heard anything to equal the music of the broken voice as she gasped out the only words that occurred to her—
"Oh, I beg your pardon—do come—I must have help at once!"
"What is it?—something wrong?—an accident?" said Lady Mabel, rapidly, in her deep, sympathetic, penetrating voice. In a flash she saw that the girl was a lady, and that her tribulation was no acting, but terribly sincere. "Try to tell me," she said, laying her hand over the trembling one with which Elaine grasped the edge of the carriage.
"A gentleman has been murdered," cried the girl—"he has been murdered, there!" waving dramatically with one arm. "He is lying in the grass, dying, or dead. Perhaps it is only a faint—Jane is with him—won't you come?"
Lady Mabel cast a sweeping glance at her travelling companion, as if to ask if here was not his adventure with a vengeance.