kle, of Pickwickian memory, trembled in
Weller's grasp. Cecil looked at him with laughing eyes, a shrewd
suspicion that he had planted her adorer, and that the quadrille on the
Serpentine was an offspring of the Cossetting poetic fancy. Thrice did
the luckless baronet essay the ice, and thrice did he come to grief with
heels in the air, and his dainty apparel disordered. At last, his
Canadian sorceress took compassion upon him, and declaring she was
tired, asked him to drive her across the pond. Cos, with an air of
languid martyrdom and a heavy sigh as he glanced at his Houbigants, torn
and soiled, grasped the back of the chair, and actually contrived to
start it. Once started, away went the chair and its Phaeton after it,
whether he would or no, its occupant looking up and laughing in the
dandy's heated, disconcerted, and anxious face. All at once there was a
crash, a plunge, and a shout from Vivian, who was on the opposite bank.
The chair had broken the ice, flung Cecil out into the water with the
shock, while her charioteer, by a lucky jump backwards, had saved
himself, and stood on the brink of the chasm unharmed. Cecil's crinoline
kept her from sinking; she stretched out her little hand with a cry--it
sounded like Vivian's name as it came to my ears on the keen north
wind--but before Vivian, who came across the ice like a whirlwind, could
get to her, Cos, valorously determining to wet his wristbands, stooped
down, and, holding by the chair, which was firmly wedged in, put his arm
round her and dragged her out. Vivian came up two seconds too late.

"Are you hurt?" he said, bending towards her.

"No," said Cecil, faintly, as her head drooped unconsciously on Cos's
shoulder. She had struck her forehead on the ice, which had stunned her
slightly. The Colonel saw the chestnut hair resting against Cos's arm;
he dropped the hand he had taken, and turned to the shore.

"Bring her to the bank," he said, briefly. "I will go home and send a
carriage. Good Heavens! that that fool should have saved her!" I heard
him mutter, as he brushed past me.

He drove the carriage down himself, and under pretext of holding on the
horses, did not descend from the box while Horace wrapped rugs and
cloaks round Cecil, who, having more pluck than strength, declared she
was quite well now, but nearly fainted when Horace lifted her out, and
she was consigned by Mrs. Vivian to her bedroom for the rest of the day.

"It is astonishing how we mi