'Miss Jocelyn, this is very imprudent. You ought to have gone to bed: you are not fit to be up after such a shock,' looking at her pale face and swollen eyes with evident emotion.
Jill looked at him gently and seriously, and held out her hands to him quite simply.
'I could not go to bed without thanking you, I am not quite so selfish and thoughtless. You have saved my life: do you think I shall ever forget that?'
Poor Lawrence! the excitement, the terror, and the relief were too much for him; and there was Jill holding his hands and looking up in his face, with her great eyes full of tears. It was not very wonderful that for a moment he forgot himself.
'I could not help doing it,' he returned. 'What would have become of me if you had died? I could not have borne it.'
Jill drew her hands away, and her face looked a little paler in the moonlight. The young man's excited voice, his strange words, must have told her the truth. No, she was not too young to understand; her head drooped, and she turned away as she answered him,—
'I shall always be grateful. Good-night, Mr. Tudor: I must go to my mother. Come, Ursula.'
She did not look back as we walked across the hall, though poor Lawrence stood quite still watching us. Why had the foolish boy said that? Why had he forgotten his position and her youth? Why had he hinted that her life was necessary to his happiness? Would Jill ever forget those words, or the look that accompanied them? I felt almost angry with Lawrence as I followed Jill into the room.
Jill need never have doubted her mother's love. Aunt Philippa had been too faint and ill to follow her daughter to her room, but her face was quite beautiful with maternal tenderness as she folded the girl in her arms. Not even her father, who especially petted Jill, showed more affection for her that night.
'Oh, Jocelyn, my darling, are you quite sure that you are unhurt? Miss Gillespie says you were only frightened and a little bruised; but I wanted to see for myself. Mr. Tudor will not let us thank him, but we shall be grateful to him all our lives, my pet. What would your poor father and I have done without you?'