Sorell took him in and looked after him like a mother, helped by the kind apple-faced rector, who had heard the castle news from other sources also, and was greatly moved.

When Otto’s exhaustion had been fed and he was lying in his bed with drawn brows, and no intention or prospect of going to sleep, Sorell let him tell his tale.

“When the bearers came, I went down with them to the castle, and I saw Lady Laura”—­said the boy, turning his head restlessly from side to side.  “I say, it’s awful—­how women cry!  Then they told me about the inquest—­I shall have to go to-morrow—­and on the way home I went to see Lady Connie.  I thought she ought to know.”

Sorell started.

“And you found her?”

“Oh, yes.  She was sitting in the garden.”

There was a short silence.  Then Otto flung up his left hand, caught a gnat that was buzzing round his head, and laughed—­a dreary little sound.

“It’s quite true—­she’s in love with him.”

“With Douglas Falloden?”

Otto nodded.

“She was awfully cut up when I told her—­just for him.  She didn’t cry of course.  Our generation doesn’t seem to cry—­like Lady Laura.  But you could see what she wanted.”

“To go to him?”

“That’s it.  And of course she can’t.  My word, it is hard on women!  They’re hampered such a lot—­by all their traditions.  Why don’t they kick ’em over?”

“I hope she will do nothing of the kind,” said Sorell with energy.  “The traditions may just save her.”

Otto thought over it.

“You mean—­save her from doing something for pity that she wouldn’t do if she had time to think?”

Sorell assented.

“Why should that fellow be any more likely now to make her happy—­”

“Because he’s lost his money and his father?  I don’t know why he should.  I dare say he’ll begin bullying and slave-driving again—­when he’s forgotten all this.  But—­”

“But what?”

“Well—­you see—­I didn’t think he could possibly care about anything but himself.  I thought he was as hard as a millstone all through.  Well, he isn’t.  That’s so queer!”

The speaker’s voice took a dreamy tone.

Sorell glanced in bitterness at the maimed hand lying on the bed.  It was still bandaged, but he knew very well what sort of a shapeless, ruined thing it would emerge, when the bandages were thrown aside.  It was strange and fascinating—­to a student of psychology—­that Otto should have been brought, so suddenly, so unforeseeably, into this pathetic and intimate relation with the man to whom, essentially, he owed his disaster.  But what difference did it make in the quality of the Marmion outrage, or to any sane judgment of Douglas Falloden?

“Go to sleep, old boy,” he said at last.  “You’ll have a hard time to-morrow.”

“What, the inquest?  Oh, I don’t mind about that.  If I could only understand that fellow!”