We saw in a second what had occasioned his alarm. The girl's face had become ghastly white; and she was almost falling away from her chair when her hostess, who happened to spring to her feet first, caught her, and held her, and called for water. What could it mean? Mary Avon was not of the sighing and fainting fraternity.
And presently she came to herself—and faintly making apologies, would go from the room. It was her ankle, she murmured—with the face still white from pain. But when she tried to rise, she fell back again: the agony was too great. And so we had to carry her.
About ten minutes thereafter the mistress of the house came back to the Laird, who had been sitting by himself, in great concern.
"That girl! that girl!" she exclaims—and one might almost imagine there are tears in her eyes. "Can you fancy such a thing! She twists her ankle in getting down from the waggonette—brings back the old sprain—perhaps lames herself for life—and, in spite of the pain, sits here laughing and joking, so that she may not spoil our first evening together! Did you ever hear of such a thing! Sitting here laughing, with her ankle swelled so that I had to cut the boot off!"
"Gracious me!" says the Laird; "is it as bad as that?"
"And if she should become permanently lame—why—why——"
But was she going to make an appeal direct to the owner of Denny-mains? If the younger men were not likely to marry a lame little white-faced girl, that was none of his business. The Laird's marrying days had departed five-and-thirty years before.
However, we had to finish our dinner, somehow, in consideration to our elder guest. And then the surgeon came; and bound up the ankle hard and fast; and Miss Avon, with a thousand meek apologies for being so stupid, declared again and again that her foot would be all right in the morning, and that we must get ready to start. And when her friend assured her that this preliminary canter of the yacht might just as well be put off for a few days—until, for example, that young doctor from Edinburgh came who had been invited to go a proper cruise with us—her distress was so great that we had to promise to start next day punctually at ten. So she sent us down again to amuse the Laird.
But hark! what is this we hear just as Denny-mains is having his whisky and hot water brought in? It is a gay voice humming on the stairs—
By the margin of fair Zürich's waters.