His look was gravely pondering.  His life had not made a mystic of him—­it was Penzance who was the mystic—­but he felt himself perplexed by mysteriously suggestive thought.

“I was brought back—­I was brought back,” he said.  “In the afternoon I fell asleep and slept profoundly until the morning.  When I awoke, I realised that I was a remade man.  The doctors were almost awed when I first spoke to them.  Old Dr. Fenwick died later, and, after I had heard about it, the church bell was tolled.  It was heard at Weaver’s farmhouse, and, as everybody had been excitedly waiting for the sound, it conveyed but one idea to them—­and the boy was sent racing across the fields to Stornham village.  Dearest!  Dearest!” he exclaimed.

She had bowed her head and burst into passionate sobbing.  Because she was not of the women who wept, her moment’s passion was strong and bitter.

“It need not have been!” she shuddered.  “One cannot bear it—­because it need not have been!”

“Stop your horse a moment,” he said, reining in his own, while, with burning eyes and swelling throat, he held and steadied her.  But he did not know that neither her sister nor her father had ever seen her in such mood, and that she had never so seen herself.

“You shall not remember it,” he said to her.

“I will not,” she answered, recovering herself.  “But for one moment all the awful hours rushed back.  Tell me the rest.”

“We did not know that the blunder had been made until a messenger from Dole rode over to inquire and bring messages of condolence.  Then we understood what had occurred and I own a sort of frenzy seized me.  I knew I must see you, and, though the doctors were horribly nervous, they dare not hold me back.  The day before it would not have been believed that I could leave my room.  You were crying out to me, and though I did not know, I was answering, body and soul.  Penzance knew I must have my way when I spoke to him—­mad as it seemed.  When I rode through Stornham village, more than one woman screamed at sight of me.  I shall not be able to blot out of my mind your sister’s face.  She will tell you what we said to each other.  I rode away from the Court quite half mad——­” his voice became very gentle, “because of something she had told me in the first wild moments.”

Lady Anstruthers had spent the night moving restlessly from one room to another, and had not been to bed when they rode side by side up the avenue in the early morning sunlight.  An under keeper, crossing the park a few hundred yards above them, after one glance, dashed across the sward to the courtyard and the servants’ hall.  The news flashed electrically through the house, and Rosalie, like a small ghost, came out upon the steps as they reined in.  Though her lips moved, she could not speak aloud, as she watched Mount Dunstan lift her sister from her horse.

“Childe Harold stumbled and I hurt my foot,” said Betty, trying to be calm.