Of course Nan did not delay, and she went into raptures over the beautiful wheel, praising it generously as she examined every point with the eye of a connoisseur.

"But it seems to me a pretty high frame!" she speculated, standing off and taking it in from a distance.

"I wanted a high frame," responded Miss Blake.

"Seems to me pretty well up in the air for you, even with the saddle down," insisted Nan, doubtfully.

"You try it," suggested the governess. "If it suits you it will certainly be too high for me."

"It does suit me," announced Nan, balancing herself by a hand against the wall. "You'd better send it back and get a lower frame."

But Miss Blake shook her head.

"No, I like this and I'm going to keep it. But of course if it is too high I can't use it, and so--so--I'm afraid you'll have to, Nan. You won't mind, will you? I mean getting your birthday present this way ahead of time? I thought if we waited you'd lose the whole summer."

Nan flung herself from the wheel in a rapture of surprise. It seemed too good to be true. She could not believe it. Miss Blake had her thanks more in the girl's radiant delight than in the mere words she spoke, though these were genuine enough and full enough of grat.i.tude.

All through the long season after that, whenever the heat was not too intense, Nan and her wheel could have been seen flashing through the Park or taking a well-earned rest in the cool shadow of the Dairy porch, where a sip of water seemed sweeter than ambrosia and a fugitive breeze more aromatic than any zephyr from Araby the blest.

Sometimes she and Miss Blake took longer trips into the country, and then the governess had to be constant in her warnings to her against her reckless fashion of riding. Again and again she spoke, and Nan always meant to take heed and then always forgot, and fell back into her old way once more.

"I can't resist such a coast as that was," she would plead. "And if I got off for every old man who thinks he has the right to the road I'd be dismounting all the while."

"I beg you not to take such risks," Miss Blake would rejoin. "It simply spoils my ride for me, Nan, to see you so reckless. Such head-long wheeling has nothing to recommend it. It is neither expert nor admirable. When you fling along so blindly you are merely doing a foolish, heedless thing and running serious risks. I am sure you will come to grief some day."

"Don't you worry! I am as much at home in my saddle as I would be in a rocking-chair. See me ride without touching the handle-bars!"

And presently she would lose all recollection of her good resolve, and go hurling on at a break-neck speed in the van of some skittish horse, or slowly zig-zag ahead in the path of some stolid coachman, causing him to anathematize all wheelmen in general and this especially provoking specimen in particular, while her watching companion held her breath in trembling alarm.

At last Miss Blake told Nan decidedly that unless she were willing to ride properly she must give it up altogether.

"I cannot stand this strain any longer," she said, in real distress.

She and Mrs. Newton and the girl herself were taking their first ride in company since the early summer. Now it was autumn, and the leaves were turning. Mrs. Newton had just come back from the country, and Nan was eager to display her skill, which she felt had improved not a little since their neighbor's departure.

The fresh wind, keen and bracing as it came from the sea, filled her with a sense of new strength and energy, and she felt the effect of the invigorating atmosphere in her blood. A scent of burning leaves was in the air, and the indescribable suggestion of coming winter gayety.

To-day the road was crowded with carriages. They thronged the fashionable drive, and lent it a peculiarly animated aspect.

Equestrians and wheelmen were also out in full force, and the presence of so many people set Nan's blood tingling with excitement. She tossed her head back, as the governess uttered her decision, with the impatience of a mettlesome horse.

"Now remember!" warned Miss Blake.

Perhaps it was just this extra little warning that proved too much for Nan's overcharged, headstrong spirit--or perhaps she did not hear in the midst of the noise of hoofs and wheels about them.

They were spinning noiselessly along the outer edge of the driveway leading from the Park entrance to the cycle path, when suddenly Nan gave a quick run forward and then made a swift dart for the other side, weaving perilously in and out among the horses and moving vehicles, dexterously dodging, veering, and turning until Miss Blake's heart throbbed thickly from dread and her pulses beat heavily in her temples.

"I must overtake her," she cried to her companion. "She will be killed! I must save her!"

Even as she spoke her breath caught in a short gasp, and she turned suddenly rigid and ashen white.

Coming up the road at full speed was a horse, whose driver, sitting close over its haunches in his narrow sulky, was racing his animal against one similarly driven and urging it on to its utmost pace for winning honor.

At his approach a clear path was made for him by the turning right and left of the throng--by all save Nan.

She heard a man's voice shout hoa.r.s.ely to her. The oncoming horse had the speed of a racer.

A spirit of mad defiance possessed her. She steered straight as an arrow before her. Then, like a flash, she veered, dodging from under the horse's very nose. She had accomplished her feat very cleverly.

But alas, for Nan!

Even as she sped on, full of the exquisite thrill of exultation in her own prowess she heard behind her the sound of a dull, fear-thickened cry. Then a sudden confusion of voices and the cessation of rolling wheels. She stopped and turned.

The onward sweep of the ma.s.s of vehicles had been instantaneously checked. The road was clear for some rods before her and in the centre of this open s.p.a.ce lay--a broken bicycle.

A little group of men crowded close about some central object on the ground. Women were wringing their hands and weeping hysterically, and one woman--it was Mrs. Newton--was crying wildly,

"Let me go to her! Let me go!"

The circle of men upon the ground made way, and then Nan saw what it was around which they knelt.

She gave a quick, fierce cry of pain. The little governess lay quite still and motionless. Her eyes were closed; her face was white as marble. All her bright hair was lying loose about her temples--and it was streaked with blood.

CHAPTER XIX

IN MISS BLAKE'S ROOM

Nan never forgot that scene. It seemed to her afterward, that even in the midst of the horror that almost stupefied her and made her blind, it had been indelibly photographed upon her brain to the merest detail with torturing distinctness.

She could see Mrs. Newton's drawn, livid face, and the stern, set expression of the men who gathered about in knots here and there discussing the accident in whispers, or arranging the best means of getting back to town. A doctor, who happened to be near at hand, had sprung forward at the first moment of alarm, and he and a strange, kind-faced woman were together bending over the prostrate form between them, while over all arched the high dome of the blue October sky, beyond them stretched the level road, narrowing in the distance to a point that seemed to pierce the sea, and on either side spread the branches of bordering maple trees, each shining brilliant and gorgeous In the autumn sunlight.

Presently, in response to a demand from the doctor, a low-hung carriage drew out from the ranks of waiting vehicles, and into it was lifted, oh, so carefully! the inert form of the governess, and her head laid upon Mrs. Newton's lap.

Nan pressed close to the wheels.

"Can't I go with her?" she whispered.

Her companion gazed at her blankly for a moment. Then she seemed to realize the question, and answered it.

"No," she replied. "Get my machine, and--and hers, and see that some one carries them back for us--some man will do it."

Then without another word she turned her head away, and slowly, slowly the carriage moved and began its snail's-pace journey townward.

Nan looked helplessly about her.

"Won't some one take the bicycles home?" she pleaded.

She never knew who performed the office. She never cared. She gave some stranger her address without the slightest interest as to whether he was trustworthy or no, and then, mounting her own machine, she sped home as fast as the wheels would turn.