Through Winton flashed one dreadful thought:  The river!

“Turn the cab round!  Stay in, Markey!  Betty and you, girl, go down to ‘the wild,’ and search there at once.  Yes?  What is it?”

The driver was leaning out.

“As we came up the hill, sir, I see a lady or something in a long dark coat with white on her head, against the hedge.”

“Right!  Drive down again sharp, and use your eyes.”

At such moments, thought is impossible, and a feverish use of every sense takes its place.  But of thought there was no need, for the gardens of villas and the inn blocked the river at all but one spot.  Winton stopped the car where the narrow lane branched down to the bank, and jumping out, ran.  By instinct he ran silently on the grass edge, and Markey, imitating, ran behind.  When he came in sight of a black shape lying on the bank, he suffered a moment of intense agony, for he thought it was just a dark garment thrown away.  Then he saw it move, and, holding up his hand for Markey to stand still, walked on alone, tiptoeing in the grass, his heart swelling with a sort of rapture.  Stealthily moving round between that prostrate figure and the water, he knelt down and said, as best he could, for the husk in his throat: 

“My darling!”

Gyp raised her head and stared at him.  Her white face, with eyes unnaturally dark and large, and hair falling all over it, was strange to him—­the face of grief itself, stripped of the wrappings of form.  And he knew not what to do, how to help or comfort, how to save.  He could see so clearly in her eyes the look of a wild animal at the moment of its capture, and instinct made him say: 

“I lost her just as cruelly, Gyp.”

He saw the words reach her brain, and that wild look waver.  Stretching out his arm, he drew her close to him till her cheek was against his, her shaking body against him, and kept murmuring: 

“For my sake, Gyp; for my sake!”

When, with Markey’s aid, he had got her to the cab, they took her, not back to the house, but to the inn.  She was in high fever, and soon delirious.  By noon, Aunt Rosamund and Mrs. Markey, summoned by telegram, had arrived; and the whole inn was taken lest there should be any noise to disturb her.

At five o’clock, Winton was summoned downstairs to the little so-called reading-room.  A tall woman was standing at the window, shading her eyes with the back of a gloved hand.  Though they had lived so long within ten miles of each other he only knew Lady Summerhay by sight, and he waited for the poor woman to speak first.  She said in a low voice: 

“There is nothing to say; only, I thought I must see you.  How is she?”

“Delirious.”

They stood in silence a full minute, before she whispered: 

“My poor boy!  Did you see him—­his forehead?” Her lips quivered.  “I will take him back home.”  And tears rolled, one after the other, slowly down her flushed face under her veil.  Poor woman!  Poor woman!  She had turned to the window, passing her handkerchief up under the veil, staring out at the little strip of darkening lawn, and Winton, too, stared out into that mournful daylight.  At last, he said: