“Don’t get up yet, Miss Toppleton; sit still,” added my mother, gently compelling her to resume her place on the sofa.
“I feel quite well now. I always faint when anything disturbs me. Mr. Wolf, I have something to say to you.”
“Well, I think I will go,” said Captain Portman.
“Not yet, if you please, sir,” interposed Grace. “What I have to say concerns you, also. My father and my brother will be terribly incensed against me if they know that I have been here.”
“They shall not know it from any of us,” I replied.
“I am sorry that my brother hates you, Mr. Wolf, and sorry that my father indulges all his whims. My mother and I think that they do very wrong; but we can’t help it. Just before I came away from home, I heard them talking together about the gentleman who put my brother out of the train at the time his leg was broken. That was you, sir, I believe?”
Captain Portman bowed his acknowledgment of the fact.
“They were talking about arresting you, sir, and taking you before the court for an assault upon Tommy.”
The stout gentleman smiled, as though it were not a very serious matter.
“But I don’t think I should have come here if this had been all,” continued Grace. “My brother saw and recognized you in the street, sir.”