"He was not a very formidable burglar, after all," Gerard answers, with a reassuring smile: "it was only Thomas, who had been seeing his sweetheart home, and was trying to get into the house without being heard."
"Oh, I'm so glad! But" (her eyes straying confusedly round the room) "how did I get here? When last I remember any thing I was in the passage."
"I carried you here."
"And then went and found out about this man?"
"Yes."
"And then came back here?"
"Yes. I hope you don't think me very impertinent," he says, apologetically; "but I could not bear the idea of your lying here, insensible, without any one making an attempt to bring you round."
Recollecting what his own method of bringing her round had been, his conscience gives him a compunctious stab. She blushes furiously, and, raising herself into a sitting posture, begins to twist up her hair with both hands.
"You are better now," he says, tenderly, but with perfect respect; "I will go."
He moves towards the door, but, before he can reach it, it flies open hastily, and Constance, dishevelled, dressing-gowned, flurried out of all likeness to herself, bursts in. "Oh, Miss Craven! I'm so frightened! I heard people talking outside——St. John!!"