He whistled again, and this time there was a hurrying from overhead.
"Sir George!"
"Come down here, will you, at once!"
In a few more minutes the boy was being marched up the road to the police-station in charge of the strong-wristed Scotch manager, and George was free to attend to Letty.
He adjusted a sling very fairly, then made her cling to him with her sound arm; and they were soon inside their own gates.
"You can't climb this hill," he said to her anxiously. "Rest at the lodge, and let me go for the brougham."
"I can walk perfectly well—and it will be much quicker."
Involuntarily, he was surprised to find her rather belittling than exaggerating the ill. As they climbed on in the dark, he helping her as much as he could, both could not but think of another accident and another victim. Letty found herself imagining again and again what the scene with Lady Maxwell, after the East End meeting, might have been like; while, as for him, a face drew itself upon the rainy dusk, which the will seemed powerless to blot out. It was a curious and unwelcome coincidence. His secret sense of it made him the more restlessly kind.
"What were you in the village for?" he asked, bending to her; "I did not know you had anything to do there!"
"I had been to see old Bessie Hammersley and Mrs. Batchelor," she said, in a tone that tried to be stiff or indifferent. "Bessie begged, as usual."