“There, my darling! I hated to do it. I hope you are not much hurt,” said the count whimsically.
“Now roll on after her,” and Herz pushed his employer over the embankment. Then he jumped down himself and wallowed in the mud.
“Here’s blood a-plenty for both of us. You can furnish blue blood but I have good red blood for two.”
He deliberately gashed his arm with his penknife and smeared his face with blood, and then rubbed it all over the countenance of the laughing count, who seemed to look upon the whole affair as a kind of college boy’s prank.
“Now your ankle is sprained and you can’t walk, so I’ll go to the nearest farmhouse for assistance and there telephone Mr. Sutton that his prisoners have escaped. You were pinioned under the car and I had to dig you out,—remember!”
“All right, but I wish you would have the sprained ankle and let me go for aid. I’m beastly hungry and besides I don’t want to be laid up just now. I rather wanted to take a walk with Miss Douglas Carter this afternoon. Heavens! Wasn’t she beautiful last night?”
“Humph!”
“Much more beautiful than her sister, although I tell you that that Helen was very wonderful, especially after her hair came down and she had played angel. I wish I could have taken that stupid doctor’s car instead of my own little red devil. I should have enjoyed ditching his car, but we needed the endurance and speed of my own darling.”
“You had better be having some pain now in case a traveler comes along the road. I’ll get help as soon as possible;” and Herz went off without any comment on the comparative beauty of the two Misses Carter. Douglas was to him the most beautiful person in all the world, but he hated himself for loving her, feeling instinctively that his love was hopeless. His very name was against him and should she ever know the truth—but pshaw! These stupid people never would find out things. They were as easy to hoodwink as the darkies themselves.