“Of course not. She has only fainted. Run and fetch Mrs Grimthorp—and water—and then, perhaps, Louise. Yes, Louise, tell her quietly so as not to startle her too.”
Somewhat hurt, but inexpressibly relieved, Celia rushed off. And in a few minutes the crowd of anxious faces and ready hands was only too great. Miss Norreys dismissed them all, while she and the housekeeper set to work to bring Winifred round again. After a while they succeeded: she shivered and opened her eyes, smiled faintly at Hertha, mentioning something about her head, then seemed to relapse into semi-consciousness again.
“It is more than a common faint,” said Hertha, regretfully. “I fear it may have been something of a sunstroke. Poor child, I hope I was not too hard upon her,” she added to herself.
Winifred had to be carried into the house, to a bedroom, for there were several such at White Turrets, on the ground floor; the doctor sent for, and worst of all, her father and mother told of the catastrophe, a shock which Hertha and Louise would gladly have spared them had it been possible. And for a few hours there was some serious anxiety. But it gradually dispersed. Hertha’s idea had been correct: it was a mild case of sunstroke, aggravated, no doubt, by the unusual agitation and emotion that Winifred had gone through that same morning.
By the third day she was much better, though not yet well enough to leave her room. And this was the day on which she was to have returned to London with her friend.
“It is rather too bad—don’t you think so?” she said to Hertha, “that when I had given in I should be tied by the leg like this, literally,”—for in her fall one ankle had been sprained. “It seems to take away all the—the credit of it, as it were,” she went on, with a rueful smile.
“No, dear, it does not. They all know—your parents and your sisters, and,” with a glance round to make sure that no one could hear, “your cousin. They all know what you had resolved, and as soon as you are well enough to talk more you will see what they feel about it,” Hertha replied.
A gleam of bright pleasure crossed Winifred’s pale face.
“Still,” she said, “does it not a little destroy your faith in our guardian ghost, as you choose to consider her? If I had been standing out about it, determined not to give in, she might have tried something of the kind, but as I had given in—”