“Well!” he said.  “So you came to see us.”

Ambrose felt the same unregenerate impulse to punch the smooth face.  However, with more circumspection than upon the previous occasion, he returned a civil answer.

“Have you heard?” asked Strange, with an expression of serious concern.

Ambrose reflected that Strange probably knew a message had been sent.

“Heard what?” he asked non-committally.

“Mr. Gaviller was taken sick last night.”

“What’s the matter with him?” asked Ambrose quickly.

Strange shrugged.  “I do not know exactly.  The doctor has not come out of the house since he was sent for.  A stroke, I fancy.”

“I will go to the house and inquire,” said Ambrose.

He proceeded, telling himself that Strange had not got any change out of him this time.  He was relieved by the breed’s news; he had feared worse.

To be sure, it was terribly hard on Colina, but on his own account he could not feel much pain of mind over a sickness of Gaviller’s.

The half-breed girl who admitted him showed a scared yellow face.  Evidently the case was a serious one.  She ushered him into the library.  The aspect, the very smell of the little room, brought back the scene of two days before and set Ambrose’s heart to beating.

Presently Colina came swiftly in, closing the door behind her.  She was very pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes.  She showed the unnatural self-possession that a brave woman forces on herself in the presence of a great emergency.  Her eyes were tragic.

She came straight to his arms.  She lowered her head and partly broke down and wept a little.

“Ah, it’s so good to have some one to lean on!” she murmured.

“Your father—­what is the matter with him?” asked Ambrose.

The look in her eyes and her piteous shaking warned him to expect something worse than the tale of an illness.

She lifted her white face.

“Father was shot last night,” she said.

“Good God!” said Ambrose.  “By whom?”

“We do not know.”

“He’s not—­he’s not—­” Ambrose’s tongue balked at the dreadful word.

She shook her head.  “A dangerous wound, not necessarily fatal.  We can’t tell yet.”

“You have no idea who did it?”

Colina schooled herself to give him a coherent account.  The sight of her forced calmness, with those eyes, was inexpressibly painful to Ambrose.

“No.  He went out after dinner.  He said he had to see a man.  He did not mention his name.  He came back at dusk.  I was on the veranda.  He was walking as usual—­perfectly straight.  But one hand was pressed to his side.

“He passed me without speaking.  I followed him in.  In the passage he said:  ’I am shot.  Tell no one but Giddings.  Then he collapsed in my arms.  He has not spoken since.”