’Find me some one else to go but that girl must not bleed to death.’

‘Bleed! oh, how horrid!  How has she got hurt?’

’I don’t know,—­I have no time to ask.  Go down to her, Fanny, and do try to make yourself of use.  Jane is with her; and I trust it looks worse than it is.  Jane has refused to leave the house, cowardly woman!  And I won’t put myself in the way of any more refusals from my servants, so I am going myself.’

‘Oh, dear, dear!’ said Fanny, crying, and preparing to go down rather than be left alone, with the thought of wounds and bloodshed in the very house.

‘Oh, Jane!’ said she, creeping into the dining-room, ’what is the matter?  How white she looks!  How did she get hurt?  Did they throw stones into the drawing-room?’

Margaret did indeed look white and wan, although her senses were beginning to return to her.  But the sickly daze of the swoon made her still miserably faint.  She was conscious of movement around her, and of refreshment from the eau de Cologne, and a craving for the bathing to go on without intermission; but when they stopped to talk, she could no more have opened her eyes, or spoken to ask for more bathing, than the people who lie in death-like trance can move, or utter sound, to arrest the awful preparations for their burial, while they are yet fully aware, not merely of the actions of those around them, but of the idea that is the motive for such actions.

Jane paused in her bathing, to reply to Miss Thornton’s question.

’She’d have been safe enough, miss, if she’d stayed in the drawing-room, or come up to us; we were in the front garret, and could see it all, out of harm’s way.’

‘Where was she, then?’ said Fanny, drawing nearer by slow degrees, as she became accustomed to the sight of Margaret’s pale face.

‘Just before the front door—­with master!’ said Jane, significantly.

‘With John! with my brother!  How did she get there?’

‘Nay, miss, that’s not for me to say,’ answered Jane, with a slight toss of her head.  ’Sarah did’——­

‘Sarah what?’ said Fanny, with impatient curiosity.

Jane resumed her bathing, as if what Sarah did or said was not exactly the thing she liked to repeat.

‘Sarah what?’ asked Fanny, sharply.  ’Don’t speak in these half sentences, or I can’t understand you.’

’Well, miss, since you will have it—­Sarah, you see, was in the best place for seeing, being at the right-hand window; and she says, and said at the very time too, that she saw Miss Hale with her arms about master’s neck, hugging him before all the people.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Fanny.  ’I know she cares for my brother; any one can see that; and I dare say, she’d give her eyes if he’d marry her,—­which he never will, I can tell her.  But I don’t believe she’d be so bold and forward as to put her arms round his neck.’

’Poor young lady! she’s paid for it dearly if she did.  It’s my belief, that the blow has given her such an ascendency of blood to the head as she’ll never get the better from.  She looks like a corpse now.’