"I said, withdrawn, sir," John repeated. As he spoke he saw the Colonel stagger backwards and sink into his chair; his face became white and twitched; his head fell to one side; he breathed stertorously, flushed slightly, and was instantly as one asleep.
Ann Penhallow and the two doctors were at his side. Rivers called out,
"Leave the room, all of you, please. Open the windows, Grace!"
"Is he dead?" asked Ann of McGregor.
"No, no—it is a slight fit—there is no danger."
A moment later Penhallow opened his eyes, sat up, and said, "Where am I?
What's all this about?"
John said, "A bit faint, uncle. The carriage is waiting." He staggered to his feet, and seizing Rivers's arm followed Ann and John in silence. With Rivers they were driven back to Grey Pine. Of all Ann Penhallow's schemes to amuse or interest her husband this had been the most utter failure.
Every one had gone from the hall when John missing Leila returned to the outer room to put on his cloak. The boy-cap Leila liked to wear in bad weather, her rain-cloak, his umbrella, were as they had been left. He stood still in the first moment available for thought and knew that here was a new trouble. She must have been so shocked and ashamed as to have fled in the rain eager to get away.
Neither he nor any man could have realized what she felt as her uncle talked wildly—and she had been put up for sale. She used none of the resources of reason. All her body was hot with the same flush of shame which burned in her face. In her passion of disgust and anger, she hurried out into the storm. The chill of the east wind was friendly. She gave no other thought to the wind-driven rain, but ran through the woods like a wild thing, all virginal woman, unreasonable, insulted, angry as a child is angry—even her uncle was forgotten. She ran upstairs, the glory of her rain-soaked hair in tumbled disorder, and in her room broke into the open speech which passion confides to the priest solitude.
"Oh, John Penhallow, how could you! That ends it—a man who could—and oh, John Penhallow!" She cried a little, wailing in a childish way, and then with some returning sense of anxiety put herself in condition to go downstairs, where she learned that her uncle was in bed. She went back to her room.