“Never had a faster seventy minutes up-wind,” said Lady Guenevere, looking at the tiny jeweled watch, the size of a sixpence, that was set in the handle of her whip, as the brush, with all the compliments customary, was handed to her. She had won twenty before.
The park so unceremoniously entered belonged to a baronet, who, though he hunted little himself, honored the sport and scorned a vulpecide, he came out naturally and begged them to lunch. Lady Guenevere refused to dismount, but consented to take a biscuit and a little Lafitte, while clarets, liqueurs, and ales, with anything else they wanted, were brought to her companions. The stragglers strayed in; the M. F. H. came up just too late; the men, getting down, gathered about the Countess or lounged on the gray stone steps of the Elizabethan house. The sun shone brightly on the oriole casements, the antique gables, the twisted chimneys, all covered with crimson parasites and trailing ivy; the horses, the scarlet, the pack in the paddock adjacent, the shrubberies of laurel and araucaria, the sun-tinted terraces, made a bright and picturesque grouping. Bertie, with his hand on Vivandiere's pommel, after taking a deep draught of sparkling Rhenish, looked on at it all with a pleasant sigh of amusement.
“By Jove!” he murmured softly, with a contented smile about his lips, “that was a ringing run!”
At that very moment, as the words were spoken, a groom approached him hastily; his young brother, whom he had scarcely seen since the find, had been thrown and taken home on a hurdle; the injuries were rumored to be serious.
Bertie's smile faded, he looked very grave; world-spoiled as he was, reckless in everything, and egotist though he had long been by profession, he loved the lad.
When he entered the darkened room, with its faint chloroform odor, the boy lay like one dead, his bright hair scattered on the pillow, his chest bare, and his right arm broken and splintered. The deathlike coma was but the result of the chloroform; but Cecil never stayed to ask or remember that; he was by the couch in a single stride, and dropped down by it, his head bent on his arms.
“It was my fault. I should have looked to him.”
The words were very low; he hated that any should see he could still be such a fool as to feel. A minute, and he conquered himself; he rose, and with his hand on the boy's fair tumbled curls, turned calmly to the medical men who, attached to the household, had been on the spot at once.
“What is the matter?”
“Fractured arm, contusion; nothing serious, nothing at all, at his age,” replied the surgeon. “When he wakes out of the lethargy he will tell you so himself, Mr. Cecil.”