When Miss Brunel saw the gun tumble on the ground and heard the report, she clasped her hands over her eyes in a vague instantaneous horror of any possible result. The next moment she looked up, and there was a black mass lying on the ground behind the tall tree. Her only thought was that he lay dead there as she ran to him, and knelt down by him, and caught him round the neck. White-lipped, trembling in every limb, and quite unconscious of what she did, she put her head down to his, and spoke to him. There were three words that she uttered in that moment of delirious pity, and self-reproach, and agony, which it was as well he did not hear; but uttered they were, never to be recalled.
When he came to himself, he saw a white face bending over him, and had but a confused notion of what had occurred. With a vigorous effort, however, mental and physical, he pulled himself together and got into a sitting posture.
"I must have given you such a fright through my stupidity," he said; but all the time he wondered to see a strange look in her eyes—a look he had never seen there before off the stage—as she knelt by him and held his hand in hers. She did not speak; she only looked at him, with a vague absent delight, as if she were listening to music.
"Poor creature!" he thought, "she does not know how to say that she is sorry for having hurt me."
So he managed to get up a quite confident smile, and struggled to his feet, giving her his hand to raise her also.
"I suppose you thought you had killed me," he said, with a laugh, "but it was only the fright knocked me over. I am not hurt at all. Look here, the charge has lodged in the tree."
He showed her a splinter or two knocked off the bark of the tree, and a few round holes where the buck-shot had lodged; but at the same time he was conscious of a warm and moist sensation creeping down his side, and down his arm likewise. Further, he pretended not to see that there was a line of red blood trickling gently over his hand, and that her dress had already caught a couple of stains from the same source.
"What's that?" she said, with a terrified look, looking from her own hand, which was likewise stained, to his. "It is blood—you have been hurt, and you won't tell me. Don't be so cruel," she added, piteously; "but tell me what I am to do, for I know you are hurt. What shall I do? Shall I run to Hermann? Shall I go for the Count? There is no water about here——"
"Sit down on those ferns—that's what you must do," said Will, "and don't distress yourself. I suppose one of the spent shot has scratched me, or something like that; but it is of no importance, and you mustn't say anything about it. When the drive is over, I shall walk home. If I had only a little—a little——"
By this time he had sate down, and as he uttered the words, another giddiness came over him, and ha would have fallen back had she not hastily caught him and supported him.