"She has gone upstairs to Lady Felixthorpe, I think. Can I be of any service?"
"A thousand thanks! I don't know of anything.... Yes, I do, though. My groom is just going to bring the doctor. Will you ride with him and call at the Rectory?—tell Taylor of this, and get him to come at once. He and Mr. Challis—Sir Alfred Challis I should say—were great friends. He'll come."
"I will go with pleasure," said Mr. Brownrigg. He went with pleasure, evidently. It is, of course, a great satisfaction to be of use in any painful crisis.
Sir Murgatroyd, as he turned to the entrance-door again, met Judith, who was accompanied by her little maid, terrified beyond measure, but behaving well. She gave an inanimate face to her father to kiss, saying collectedly, but in the same stony way: "There really is no occasion for anxiety about me. I am perfectly safe. Only don't ask me to talk about it now." Her father followed her in silence to the door of her room, when she turned and spoke again, after a visible effort that failed. "Is he killed?" she said, forcing the word out.
"Oh no!—no, no!—no such thing! Stunned—contused—that sort of thing! I've sent Bullett for Pordage. I should have sent the car, but Monsieur Louis isn't in a state to manage it. There would have been another accident.... What?"
"Tell them—mamma and Sibyl—not to disturb me. I will tell you after.... No! When the doctor has seen him, tell my little maid here. She will bring me word." And then Judith, whose beauty had lost nothing by the shock she has sustained—if anything, the reverse—vanishes into her room, and her father hears the key in the lock turned significantly. In the old Baronet's look now, roused as he is from his easy-going homeliness, and with a certain resolve growing on him, one sees that that beauty is not inherited from her mother alone. He goes straight to the room where the injured man lies, still insensible and motionless, still with a low pulse that neither gains nor loses. The doctor cannot be very long, if Bullett finds him at home. His practice is to remain at home in the morning.
"Do you know anything of all this?" Sir Murgatroyd asks the question of his wife and younger daughter in the bedroom of the latter, where he has found them, white and frightened—talking in a nervous undertone, but quickly, and as folk talk who can tell things.
"She has been seeing him. Sibyl says so."
"Seeing Challis?"