Lionel, panting from the unusual exertion, turned to look after the lady. She, who had behaved with such admirable composure while danger was imminent, now that it was over, lay in a faint. As he raised her in his arms he noticed with satisfaction that she was certainly beautiful and her clothes expensive and tasteful. "Ha! ha!" he thought whimsically, "a secretaryship! Governor of a Crown Colony at least! I must take a flat to-morrow!" He bore her into a chemist's shop that stood conveniently near, and placed her in a chair. While the chemist was applying sal volatile in the genteelest manner, Lionel was wondering whom he should ask to support him at St. George's.
It was not long before the lady recovered her senses, and she opened her eyes with a ravishing sigh. She was naturally bewildered, and Lionel—partly because he wished to reassure her, partly because she was very pretty—knelt and took her hand.
"There is no need for alarm," he said persuasively, with the purring note that some women find sympathetic. "You fainted; that is all."
She gave the ghost of a shudder: "I fainted?"
"Yes. The horse, ran away, but there was no accident."
"The coachman—is he hurt?"
This thought for another in the midst of her own recovery flushed Lionel's being like a draught of wine. Hitherto she had been merely a pretty aristocrat and (apparently) a delightful girl. Now she was more—a divine human whom he longed to kiss, caress and call "You darling!"
"No," he said. "He fell softly. Upon a constable, I believe."
She was nearly herself again, and gave a little laugh. "Let us hope he was a fat one," she said. And then, after a pause: "Who stopped the horse?"
"Oh, I was lucky enough to do that," he replied with an assumed jauntiness, wishing he could feel it was an every-day business. "It was not hard."