ry to carry the news of the disaster to Pensham Steynes, Sir
Hamilton Torrens's house twenty miles off, and that that baronet and his
daughter Irene Torrens had come at once. "I hope he hasn't killed the
mare," said the Earl apprehensively. But his wife summoned Norbury to a
secret confidence, saying after it:--"No--it's all right--he came on the
box--didn't ride." From which the Earl knew--if the avenue didn't--that
Tom Kettering the groom, after an incredible break across country,
stabled the mare at Pensham Steynes, and rode back with the carriage.
The whole thing had been negotiated in less than three hours.

All these things Gwendolen comes to be aware of somehow. But all of us
know how a chance word in a confused conversation stays by the hearer,
who is forced to listen to what is no elucidation of it, and is
discontented. Such a word had struck this young lady; and she watched
for her father, as lunch died away, to get the elucidation overdue. She
was able to intercept him at the end of a long colloquy with Sir
Coupland. "What did you mean, papa dearest, just now?..."

"What did I mean, dear?... When?"

"By 'until he's fit to move'?"

"I meant until Sir Coupland says he can be safely brought up to the
house."

"_This_ house, my dear?" It is not Gwen who speaks, but her mother, who
has joined the conversation.

"Certainly, my love," says the Earl, with a kind of appealing
diffidence. "If you have no very strong objection. He can be carried,
Sir Coupland says, as soon as the wound is safe from inflammation. Of
course he must not be left at the Hall."

"Of course not. But there are beds at the Lodge...." However, the Earl
says with a meek self-assertion:--"I think I would rather he were
brought here. His father and George were at Christ Church together...."
Before which her ladyship concedes the point. His lordship then says he
shall go at once to the Hall to see Sir Hamilton, and Gwen suggests that
she shall accompany him. She may persuade Miss Torrens to come up to the
Towers.

This assumption that the wounded man could be moved, after conversation
between the Earl and Sir Coupland, was so reassuring, that Gwendolen
felt it more than ever due to herself to cultivate that indifference
about his recovery. However, she could not easily be too affectionate
and hospitable to his sister under the circumstances.

By-the-by, it was rather singular that she had never seen this Irene
Torrens, when they were almos