An officious hostler stood at the horses' heads to prove that their fire required to be restrained; but the fact was, that it was with difficulty they could be urged from the door. Zorilda desired that they might not be pushed beyond their strength; and the postilion, making a virtue of necessity, assuring her at the same time that his "cattle" could easily go at the rate of ten miles an hour, condescended to let them go at the only pace of which they were capable, a snail-slow walk, by which, in course of time, they arrived at a house seven miles on the stage of fifteen which they had to go. Here the horses were to bait; and precisely as the driver flourished his whip, to bring his tired beasts up to the door with some sort of eclat, a heavy waggon, which had just descended a steep hill in the opposite direction, came in such violent contact with the wheels of Zorilda's chaise as to overturn it in an instant into a deep ditch by the road side.
The people of the house ran to assist the travellers; but Zorilda had fainted from the agony of a dislocated wrist, and it was some time before she could be extricated from her perilous situation. At length she was conveyed into the house, and laid upon a bed; while Rachel, almost distracted with apprehension, implored every body whom she met to go for a surgeon. None was to be had nearer than the town which they had left in the morning, and the only expedient was to send off a man and horse, but there was no horse in the stable at this poor place, and all that remained was to dispatch the post-boy with one of his tired steeds back again. In the interim the dislocated joint might become inflamed, and the greatest difficulty occur in replacing it. Zorilda continued insensible; Rachel ran nearly frantic out of the house to way lay the passengers, if any were haply going the road, who could assist her in this distress. A horseman advanced.
"Thank God!" exclaimed Rachel; "I will tell him what has happened, and he will be a swifter messenger, if he will undertake the thing, than this looby and his jaded beast."
Running to meet the gentleman, who approached at a swinging trot, what was the poor woman's joyful surprise to recognise the young man who had restored the letter, and whom she left only a few short hours preceding, at the inn where the ball had been given.
No time was lost, and even Rachel, loquacious as was her usual habit, was brief on this occasion. The stranger alighted in an instant, and only employing the precaution of charging Rachel on no account to divulge either to Miss Gordon, or to any one whomsoever, her previous acquaintance with him, flew to the apartment in which Zorilda, suffering tortures of pain, had just opened her eyes on the women who were rubbing her forehead, applying burnt feathers to her nostrils, and trying whatever other scanty means the place supplied, to restore animation. The young gentleman, whom the patient at once concluded to be a medical practitioner, immediately pulled the injured limb, and with a powerful and skilful effort replaced the joint. Then, calling for vinegar and spirits, he bathed the hand and arm, which he bound, and leaving Rachel to prepare for accompanying her mistress to his father's house, which was, he said close at hand, and from whence he would immediately despatch a carriage for her conveyance thither. He re-mounted his horse with the rapidity of lightning, and disappeared in an instant.
Before it was possible to imagine that he could have ridden a mile and back again, he returned with the family coach, in which his sister had brought cushions, shawls, pillows, and all sorts of accommodation for the invalid, whose acute pain and fever, added to the tears of Rachel, induced her to submit without resistance. Zorilda suffered herself to be placed in the coach, and conveyed to Sir Godfrey Cecil's splendid abode, where, leaving her under medical care, we must digress for a little while to explain some circumstances connected with the family amongst whom, she was now introduced by the singular course of her fortunes.
CHAPTER XI.
"I was born so high
Our eiry buildeth in the cedar top,
And dallies with the winds, and scorns the sun."