"But oh, my dear child, I think and hope you are mistaken," said she. "People are not murdered out in the road in broad daylight here in England."
"Oh, won't you come?—won't you come? I tell you he is bleeding—I saw the blood on Jane's hand!" cried Elaine, with a shudder of irrepressible repugnance.
"Let us drive on at once and see to this," said Claud, with sudden energy, rising and letting himself out into the road. "I will go on the box with Goodman, if this young lady will take my seat—she looks fearfully exhausted."
"I have run so fast," said Elaine, with a smile of apology, as, nothing loth, she sank into the vacant seat. "Tell him to drive quickly, won't you? He must take the first turning to the right."
Mr. Cranmer mounted to the box, and the horses started briskly, Goodman being by no means less excited than his master and mistress at this novel experience.
The girl leaned back in the carriage and hid her face. The whole of her frame was shaking with feeling she could not repress.
Her companion looked at her with eager sympathy, and presently it seemed as if the magnetism of her wonderful eyes drew Elaine to look up at her, which she did in a timid, appealing way, as if imploring some solution of the mysteries of life which were bursting upon her so suddenly.
It was a very remarkable face which bent down to hers—a face not so much beautiful as expressive. The features were so strong that they would have been masculine but for the eyes—such eyes! Of the darkest iron-grey, darkened still more by the blackness of brows and lashes—eyes which could flash, and melt, shine with laughter, brim with tears—eyes which were never the same two moments together. Their effect was heightened by the fact that, though Lady Mabel Wynch-Frère was certainly not yet forty, her hair was ashen grey, as could be seen under her travelling-hat.
She was very small, slender, thin, and active—a person impossible to describe—genial, impetuous, yet one with whom no one dared take a liberty; a creature of moods and fancies, delighting in the unusual and the Quixotic.
To-day's adventure suited her exactly; her eyes were full of such unutterable sympathy as she bent them on the frightened girl beside her, that whatever secret Elaine might have possessed must infallibly have been told to her; but Elaine's life, as we know, possessed no secrets.