“It was all wrong—­wrong!” she whispered back to him, and he poured forth the tenderest, fierce words of confession and prayer, and she listened, drinking them in, with now and then a soft sob pressed against the roughness of the enrapturing tweed.  For a space they had both forgotten her hurt, because there are other things than terror which hypnotise pain.  Mount Dunstan was to be praised for remembering it first.  He must take her back to Stornham and her sister without further delay.

“I will put your saddle on Anstruthers’ horse, or mine, and lift you to your seat.  There is a farmhouse about two miles away, where I will take you first for food and warmth.  Perhaps it would be well for you to stay there to rest for an hour or so, and I will send a message to Lady Anstruthers.”

“I will go to the place, and eat and drink what you advise,” she answered.  “But I beg you to take me back to Rosalie without delay.  I feel that I must see her.”

“I feel that I must see her, too,” he said.  “But for her—­God bless her!” he added, after his sudden pause.

Betty knew that the exclamation meant strong feeling, and that somehow in the past hours Rosalie had awakened it.  But it was only when, after their refreshment at the farm, they had taken horse again and were riding homeward together, that she heard from him what had passed between them.

“All that has led to this may seem the merest chance,” he said.  “But surely a strange thing has come about.  I know that without understanding it.”  He leaned over and touched her hand.  “You, who are Life—­without understanding I ride here beside you, believing that you brought me back.”

“I tried—­I tried!  With all my strength, I tried.”

“After I had seen your sister to-day, I guessed—­I knew.  But not at first.  I was not ill of the fever, as excited rumour had it; but I was ill, and the doctors and the vicar were alarmed.  I had fought too long, and I was giving up, as I have seen the poor fellows in the ballroom give up.  If they were not dragged back they slipped out of one’s hands.  If the fever had developed, all would have been over quickly.  I knew the doctors feared that, and I am ashamed to say I was glad of it.  But, yesterday, in the morning, when I was letting myself go with a morbid pleasure in the luxurious relief of it—­something reached me—­some slow rising call to effort and life.”

She turned towards him in her saddle, listening, her lips parted.

“I did not even ask myself what was happening, but I began to be conscious of being drawn back, and to long intensely to see you again.  I was gradually filled with a restless feeling that you were near me, and that, though I could not physically hear your voice, you were surely calling to me.  It was the thing which could not be—­but it was—­and because of it I could not let myself drift.”

“I did call you!  I was on my knees in the church asking to be forgiven if I prayed mad prayers—­but praying the same thing over and over.  The villagers were kneeling there, too.  They crowded in, leaving everything else.  You are their hero, and they were in deep earnest.”