d. Scarcely less than
this, if fortunately she was alive, he dreaded the necessity that would
require his laying desecrating masculine hands upon her for her better
resuscitation.

"Is she dead, sir?" asked Carrick, bending above them as he noted Carter
groping blindly for her pulse. "She looks like a queen," he added in a
voice husky with the awe inspired by the marble stillness of her face.

Hesitatingly Carter's finger rested on her wrist. A lump leaped to his
throat, he could have shouted with joy as he found that the pulse still
stirred.

"She is not dead," he said in a voice vibrant with thanksgiving. His
eyes sought the Cockney's for a responsive gleam of gratitude.

His trembling fingers awkwardly loosened the habit about the round white
throat. The unavoidable contact with the satiny skin caused his head to
whirl and his face to crimson. Finally controlling himself he began to
watch patiently for the sign of returning consciousness. During the ages
it appeared to take, he inventoried the beauty of the face, the perfect
ensemble of which had impressed him as she rode into view.

A shapely little head of wavy black hair lay in the crook of his elbow.
The loosened strands breeze-blown against his cheek seemed light as the
sheen of a spider's craft. These waved to the rhythm of beauty above a
low white forehead veined in an indefinite tint of blue. The eyebrows
were fine and daintily arched. Black lashes long and up-curling swept
the unexplainable curve of her cheek, at the present time apparently
masking eyes too rare for the vision of man. The nose, thin and ever so
slightly bridged, was an epitome of aristocracy.

The mouth, just beginning to quiver with reanimation, was curved in the
curl of flowers in bud, and sweet and kind as the animate soul of a
rose. A womanly chin turned, none could say where, into the matchless
sweep and curve of the throat and breast, a glimpse of which he had had
vouchsafed in such a breathless vision.

"Where's her hat, Carrick?" Carter asked, not because there was any
immediate use for that article of apparel, but with the instinct of an
orderly man to keep all things together. After a considerable search the
chauffeur picked up something from the gutter by the side of the road
and handed it to his master.

"This must be it, sir," he commented. It was a broad felt hat with one
side of the brim looped up with a jewel _a la cavalier_ while a fine
black plume curled about it.