“The car will take us quicker. Maggie, you drive. I’ll stand on the footboard.”
They swiftly covered the hundred yards or so to the scene of the catastrophe. And there thirty feet below in the ravine the old car was burning amid the heavy vapour of petrol smoke.
“Quick,” cried Olivia, “let us get down! He may still be alive.”
The young man shook his head. “Not much chance, poor devil.”
“Did you know him?” asked the lady.
“It was my husband,” cried Olivia tragic-eyed.
They all plunged down the slope, the young man going straight in the ruts of the leaping car. Olivia, after a fall or two, ran gropingly to side levels, catching hold of bushes to aid her descent, her brain too scorched with the terror of that which lay below, for coherent thought.
Again her light, high-heeled shoes tripped her on the smooth grass and she slithered down a few yards. And then, as she steadied herself once more on her feet, she heard a voice from behind a clump of gorse:
“Just my damned luck!”
Her knees shook violently. She wanted to shriek, but she controlled herself and, staggering round the gorse bush, came upon Alexis, seated on a hummock, his head between his hands. He looked up at her stupidly; and she, with outspread fingers on panting bosom: