"Please sit down," went on Mrs. Lorton. "Eleanor, let me beg of you to collect your senses. Get that cushion--sit down. Let me place this at your back. Do you feel faint? My smelling salts, Eleanor!"

The man's lips tightened, and the frown darkened the whole of his face.

Nell knew that he was swearing under his breath and wishing Mrs. Lorton and herself at the bottom of the sea.

"No, no!" he said, evidently struggling with his irritation and his impatience of the whole scene. "I'm not at all faint. I've fallen from my horse, and I think I've smashed my arm, that's all."

"All!" echoed Mrs. Lorton, in accents of profound sympathy and anxiety.

"Oh, dear, dear! Nell, we must send for the doctor. Will you not put your feet up on the sofa? It is such a relief to lie at full length."

He rose with a look of determination in his dark eyes.

"Thank you very much, madame, but I cannot consent to give you any further trouble. I am quite capable of walking to anywhere, and I will----" He broke off with an exclamation and sank down again. "I must be worse than I thought," he said suddenly, "and I must ask you to put up with me for a little while--half an hour."

Mrs Lorton crossed the room with the air of an empress, or a St. Teresa on the verge of a great mission, and rang the bell.

"I cannot permit you to leave this house until you have recovered--quite recovered," she said, in a stately fashion. "Molly, get the spare room ready for this gentleman. Eleanor, you might a.s.sist, I think! I will see that the sheets are properly aired--nothing is more important in such a case--and we will send for the doctor while you are retiring."

Molly plunged out, followed by Nell, and Mrs. Lorton seated herself opposite the injured man, and, folding her hands, gazed at him as if she were solely accountable for his welfare.

"I'm very much obliged to you, madame," he said, at last, and by no means amiably. "May I ask to whom I am indebted for so much--kindness?"

"My name is Lorton," said the dear lady, as if she had picked him up and brought him in and given him brandy; "but I am a Wolfer."

He looked at her as if he thought she were mad, and Mrs. Lorton hastened to explain.

"I am a near relative of Lord Wolfer."

"Oh, yes, yes; I beg your pardon," he said, with a touch of relief. "I didn't understand for a moment."

"Perhaps you know Lord Wolfer?" she asked sweetly.

He shook his head.

"I've heard of him."

"Of course," she a.s.sented blandly. "He is sufficiently well known, not to say famous. And your name--if I may ask?"

He frowned, and was silent for an instant.

"Vernon," he said reluctantly, "Drake Vernon."

"Indeed! The name seems familiar to me. Of the Northumberland Vernons, I suppose?"

"No," he replied, rather shortly.

"No? There are some Vernons in Warwickshire, I remember," she suggested.

He shook his head.

"I'm not connected with any of the Vernons," he said with a grim courtesy.

Mrs. Lorton looked rather disappointed, but only for a moment; for, foolish as she was, she knew a gentleman when she saw one, and this Mr.

Vernon, though not one of the Vernons, was evidently a gentleman and a man of position. She smiled at him graciously.

"Sometimes one scarcely knows with whom one is connected," she said. "If you will excuse me, I will go and see if your room is prepared. We have only one servant--now," she sighed plaintively, "and my daughter is young and thoughtless."

"She is not the latter, at any rate," he said, but coldly enough. "Your daughter displayed extraordinary presence of mind----"

"My stepdaughter, I ought to explain," broke in Mrs. Lorton, who could not endure the praise of any other than herself. "My late husband--I am a widow, Mr. Vernon--left me his two children as a trust, a sacred trust, which I hope I have discharged to the best of my ability. I will rejoin you presently."

He rose and bowed, and then leaned back and closed his eyes, and swore gently but thoroughly.

Mrs. Lorton returned in a few minutes with Molly.

"If you will come now? We have sent for the doctor."

"Thank you, thank you!" he said, and he went upstairs with them; but he would not permit them to a.s.sist him to take off his coat, and sat on the edge of the bed waiting with a kind of impatient patience for the doctor.

By sheer good luck it was just about the time old Doctor Spence made his daily appearance in Shorne Mills, and Nell, running up to the crossway, caught him as he was ambling along on his old gray cob.

"Eh? what is it, my dear? That monkey of a brother got into mischief again?" he said, laying his hand on her shoulder. "What? Stranger? Broke his arm? Come, come; you're frightened and upset. No need, no need!

What's a broken arm! If it had been his neck, now!"

"I'm not frightened, and I'm not upset!" said Nell indignantly, but with a smile. "I'm out of breath with running."

"And out of color, too, Nell. No need to run back, my dear. I'll hurry up and see what's wrong."

He spoke to the cob, who understood every word and touch of his master, and jolted down the steep road, and Nell followed slowly. She was rather pale, as he had noticed, but she was not frightened. In all her uneventful life nothing so exciting, so disturbing had happened as this accident. It was difficult to realize it, to realize that a great strong man had been cast helpless at her feet, that she had had his head on her lap; she looked down at the patch on her dress and shuddered. Was she glad or sorry that she had chanced to be near when he fell? As she asked herself the question her conscience smote her. What a question to arise in her mind! Of course she should be glad, very glad, to have been able to help him. Then the man's face rose before her, and appealed to her by its whiteness, by the weary, wistful lines about the lips and eyes.

"I wonder who he is?" she asked herself, conscious that she had never seen any one like him, that he was in some way different to any one of the men she had hitherto met.

As she walked slowly, thoughtfully down the road, a strange feeling came upon her; it was as if she had touched, if only with the finger tips, the fringe of the great unknown world.

The doctor, breaking away from the lengthy recountal of Mrs. Lorton, went upstairs to the spare room, where still sat Mr. Drake Vernon on the edge of the bed, very white, but very self-contained.

"How do you do, doctor?" he said quietly. "I've come a cropper and knocked my head and broken some of my bones. If you'll be so good----"

"Take off your coat. My good sir, why didn't you let them help you to undress?" broke in the old man, with the curtness of the country doctor, who, as a rule, is no respecter of persons.

"I've given these good people trouble enough already," was the reply.

"Thanks; no, you don't hurt me--not more than can be helped. And I'm not going to faint. Thanks, thanks."

He got undressed and into bed, and the doctor "went over" him. As he got to the injured arm, Mr. Vernon drew his signet ring from his finger and slipped it in his pocket.

"Rather nasty knock on the head; broken arm--compound fracture, unfortunately."

"Oh! just patch me up so that I can get away at once, will you?"

The old man shook his head.