Leo made light of her accident, though her shoulder was a good deal hurt, and she bore the bandaging of what was a serious wrench with the greatest fortitude. As North learned by degrees, there had been a magnificent run, but towards the last, when Leo was almost heading the field, the mare had become unmanageable, and had rushed at a dangerous jump, with the result that she fell, threw her rider on the bank of the deep little river, and, in her efforts to rise, entangled herself with Leo’s habit, and rolled with her right into the water.

“A most providential escape,” said Salis, who looked pale with anxiety.

“What nonsense, Hartley!” said the girl; “a bit of a bruise on the shoulder and a wetting.”

“Yes, but you would have been drowned if the gentlemen of the hunt had not galloped up to your aid.”

“But they always do gallop up to a lady’s aid if her horse falls,” said Leo, speaking excitedly. “There, don’t make so much of it; and it was utterly absurd, Hartley, for you to send for a doctor for such a trifle.”

“Trifle or no, Miss Salis,” said the doctor, “I should advise your seeking your bed at once.”

“Nonsense, Dr North!”

“Well, then, I must insist,” he said firmly.

“Oh, very well,” said Leo; “I suppose you are master, so I have no more to say. A little girl has had an accident, and so they put her to bed. Fudge!”

“Leo, dear,” said Mary, from her couch, “pray be advised. Dr North would not wish it if it were not necessary.”

“Certainly not,” said North shortly, for he was annoyed at Leo’s flippant manner, and ready to wonder why he had felt attracted that morning.

“What nonsense, Mary!” cried Leo. “Pray don’t you interfere.”

Mary sighed, and remained silent.

“Well, as you please,” said North. “I have given you good advice: act as you think best.”

He turned to go, but was followed into the hall by the curate.

“Come into my room,” said the latter, with a pained and perplexed look in his face. “This is very sad, old fellow.”

“What? being guardian to a couple of giddy girls?” said the doctor petulantly. “No, no: I beg your pardon; don’t take any notice of my bitter way; but really, Salis, old boy, you had better have got rid of that mare.”

“Yes, I wish I had,” said the curate sadly; “but Leo seems to take such pleasure in it – and who could foresee such a mishap as this?”

“I could,” said the doctor shortly. “Good thing she was not killed.”

“You don’t think the hurt serious?”

“Serious? No. Give her a good deal of pain, of course.”

“And the chill?”

“What chill?”

“The plunge into the river after a heated ride.”

“She changed her things at once, of course?”

“No,” said the curate. “It seems that out of bravado she insisted on mounting again, and then rode slowly home. She was shivering when she came in.”

“Why was I not told all this before?” said North sharply. “Look here, Salis, old fellow; she must go to bed directly, and take what I send her. Exercise your authority, or she will have a very serious cold.”

He hurried away, and did not send the promised medicine, but took it himself, leaving it with emphatic instructions as to its being taken; and the result was that Leo Salis laughed at the supposed necessity, as she termed it, and calmly declined to follow out the doctor’s views.

Chapter Sixteen.
“I am not Ill.”

Hartley Salis did not tell the doctor the whole of his trouble, neither did he say a word to Mary upon the subject; but she divined the cause of his auger as she lay helpless there, and sighed as she wished that she could set matters right.

For Tom Candlish had ridden home with Leo, and parted at the gate.

“I might have known that they would meet,” said Salis, as he sat thinking; “but I never imagined that he would have the assumption to come again to the house.”

But Tom Candlish had helped Leo when she was in great peril of being drowned; and as the curate learned this he felt his impotence, and was coldly courteous, while, on his side, Tom Candlish was defiant, almost to the point of insolence; and his manner to Leo seemed intimate enough to startle Salis, and make him wonder whether they had met since the scene at the river-side.

Hartley Salis soon had something to divert his attention from this point, for the next day Leo was not very well. She was tired, she said. It had been a very long run, but delightful all the same; and she allowed now that perhaps it would have been better if she had listened to the doctor’s advice.

“I shall be quite well to-morrow,” she cried. “Why, Hartley, how serious you look!”

“Do I?” he said, smiling, for he had been communing with himself as to whether he should ask Leo plainly if she had kept her word.

“Do you? Yes!” she cried angrily; and, without apparent cause, she flashed out into quite a fit of passion. “I declare it is miserable now to be at home. It is like living between two spies.”

“My dear Leo!” began Salis.

“I don’t care: it is. Mary here watches me as a cat does a mouse. You always follow me about whenever I stir from home; and then you two compare notes, and plot and plan together how to make my life a burden.”

“Leo, dear,” said Mary gently, “you are irritable and unwell, or you would not speak like this.”

“I would. I am driven to it by my miserable life at home. I am treated like a prisoner.”

“Leo, my child,” began Salis.

“Yes, that’s it – child! You treat me as if I were a child, and I will not bear it. Anything more cruel it is impossible to conceive.”

“Nonsense, dear,” said Salis, smiling gravely, as he took his sister’s hand.

She snatched it away; not so quickly, though, but that he had time to feel that it was burning hot, as her scarlet cheeks seemed to be, while her eyes were unusually brilliant.

It was no time to question or reproach, and the curate set himself to soothe.

“Why, Leo, my dear,” he said, smiling. “I shall begin to think you are cross.”

“If you mean indignant,” she retorted, “I am. My very soul seems to revolt against the wretched system of espionage you two have established against me.”

“No, no, Leo, dear!” said Mary. “How can you say such things of Hartley, whose every thought is for your good?”

“Good – good – good!” cried Leo; “I’m sick of the very word! Be good! Be a good girl! Oh! it’s sickening!”

Salis made a sign to Mary to be silent, but Leo detected it.

“There!” she cried, with her eyes flashing. “What did I say? You two are always plotting against me. Ah!”

She shivered as from a sudden chill, and drew her chair closer to the fire.

“Do you feel unwell, dear?” said Salis anxiously.

“No, no, no! I have told you both a dozen times over that I am quite well. It is a cold morning, and I shivered a little. Is there anything extraordinary in that?”

“I only felt anxious about you, dear.”

“Then, pray don’t feel anxious, but let me be in peace.”

She caught up a book, and tried to read; while, to avoid irritating her, Salis and Mary resumed their tasks – the one writing, the other busy over her needle; and to both it seemed as if they were performing penance, so intense was the desire to keep on glancing at Leo, while they felt the necessity for avoiding all appearance of noticing her.

She held her book before her, and appeared to be reading, but she did not follow a line; for the letters were blurred, and a curious, dull, aching sensation racked her from head to foot, rising, as it were, in waves which swept through her brain, and made it throb.

This, with its accompanying giddiness, passed off, and with obstinate determination she kept her place, and the pretence of reading was carried on till towards evening.

They had dined – a weary, comfortless meal – at which Leo had taken her place, and made an attempt to eat; but it was evident to the others that the food disgusted her, and almost everything was sent untasted away.

The irritability seemed to have died out, but every attempt to draw her into conversation failed; and after a time the meal progressed in silence, till they drew round the fire at the end to resume their tasks, almost without a word.

Salis was busy over a formal report of the state of the parish for the rector. Mary was hard at work stitching, to help a poor widow who gained a precarious living by needlework, and Leo still had her book before her eyes.

Mary’s were aching, and she was about to ring for the lamp, for the short December afternoon was closing in, and Salis was in the act of wiping his pen, when Leo suddenly let fall her book, to sit up rigidly, staring wildly at them.

“Leo, my child!”

“Well, what is it?” she said; and her voice sounded harsh and strange. “Why did you say that? You knew I should say yes.”

“Yes, yes, of course, my dear; but I did not speak.”

“You did. You said I lied unto you, quite aloud, and” – with a return of her irritable way – “are we never going to have dinner?”

Salis rose from the table where he had been writing, and laid his hand upon his sister’s arm.

“Leo, dear,” he said anxiously; and he gazed in her wild eyes, which softened and looked lovingly in his.

“No,” she said, as she nestled to him and laid her cheek upon his arm; “a bit of a wrench. My shoulder aches, but it will soon be well, dear.”

“Lie back in your chair,” said Salis, as he laid his hand upon her throbbing brow.

“Yes, that’s nice,” she said, smiling as she obeyed. “So cool and refreshing – so cool.”

“Do you feel drowsy? Would you like to have a nap?”

“Yes, if you wish it,” she said. “I am sleepy. Don’t tell them at home, dear.”

Salis started, and his face grew convulsed, as he exchanged glances with Mary, who read his wish, wrote a few lines in pencil, and softly rang the bell.

“Take that at once,” she whispered to Dally Watlock, who entered, round-eyed and staring.

“To Mr Tom Candlish, miss?”

“No, no, girl; to Mr North.”

Mary drew her breath hard as the door closed behind the girl, for she read in her words a tale of deceit and also who had been the messenger, perhaps, in many a love missive sent on either side.

She tried to rise, feeling that this was a time of urgent need; but her eyes became suffused with tears as she sank back helpless in her seat.

“Take my arm, Leo, dear,” said Salis. “You would be better if you went up to your room and lay down.”

“Yes, dear; if you wish it,” she said softly; and she started up, but caught at her brother, and clung to him as if she had been seized by a sudden vertigo, and then stared wildly round.

Salis gave Mary a nod, and then, drawing Leo’s arm through his, led her up to the door of her room, which she entered while he ran quickly down.

“Quite delirious,” he said quickly. “I hope North will not be long. I thought he would have been here this morning.”

He was busy as he spoke preparing for a task which he had performed twice daily since Mary’s convalescence. For, taking her in his arms as easily as if she had been a child, he bore her out of the room and up to Leo’s door.

As Mary, trembling with anxiety, pressed it open, Leo uttered an angry cry, dashed forward, and thrust the door back in her face.

“No, no!” she said hoarsely; “not you. Let me be. Let me rest in peace.”

“But Leo, dear, you are ill.”

“I am not ill,” she cried fiercely. “Go away!”

“Don’t irritate her,” whispered Salis gently. “Leo, dear, Mary will be in her own room. Lie down now.”

The phase of gentleness had passed, and Leo turned upon him almost savagely, in her furious contempt.

“Lie down! Lie down! as if I were a dog! Oh! there must be an end to this. There must be an end to this.”

She had partly opened the door so as to speak to her brother, but now she closed it loudly, and they heard her walking excitedly to and fro.

Chapter Seventeen.
What Dally was Doing

“I feared it,” said North, as he returned from the bedroom, where he had left Leo with the servants, who stood staring helplessly at her, and listening to her ravings about the mare, the plunge into the cold river, and the injured shoulder. “Violent fever and delirium. Poor girl! what could we expect? Heated with her ride, the fall, the sudden plunge into the water, and then a long, slow ride in the drenched garments.”

“Do you think she is very ill?” said Mary anxiously.

“Very; but not dangerously, I hope. There, trust to me, and I will do everything I can. You must have a good nurse at once. Those women are worse than useless. I’ll send on my housekeeper.”

“But you are not going?” cried Salis, with the look of alarm so commonly directed at a doctor.

“My dear boy – only to fetch medicine. I’ll not be long; and mind this: she must not leave her room now. She must be kept there at any cost.”

“And I am so helpless, Hartley,” whispered Mary piteously. “It is so hard to bear.”

The curate bent down and kissed her, and then, taking his place by the bedroom door, he remained to carry out the instructions he had received.

They were necessary, for he had not been there five minutes before the delirious girl rose from her couch, and there was an angry outcry on the part of the women. She insisted upon going to the stable to see to her mare. It was being neglected; and it was only by the exercise of force that she was kept in the room.

Before half-an-hour had passed, the doctor was back, and quiet, firm Mrs Milt, who put off her crotchety ways in the face of this trouble, took her place by the bedside, and with good effect; for, partly soothed by the old woman’s firm management, and partly by the strong opiate the doctor had administered, Leo sank into a restless sleep, in which she kept on muttering incoherently, the only portions of her speech at all connected being those dealing with her accident, which seemed to her to be repeated again and again.

It was towards ten o’clock, as the doctor was returning by the short cut of the fields to the Rectory, after having been home for a short time, that he caught sight of a couple of figures a short distance over the stile leading down to the meadows, through which the little river ran.

“Humph!” he muttered, as, in spite of the darkness, he recognised the figures, his own steps being hushed by the moist pasture, and the couple too intent upon their conversation to hear him pass.

“Humph!” he said; “poor old Moredock is right, perhaps, about the girl. Confounded hard upon the people to have such a scoundrel loose among them.”

He half-hesitated, as if he felt that it was his duty to interfere, but there was too much earnest work at the Rectory for him to speak at a time like this. And, besides, he could not have explained why, but the thought seemed to afford him something like satisfaction, for it was evident that if Tom Candlish had stooped to court pretty Dally Watlock, the Rectory servant, everything must have long been at an end between Leo and the squire’s brother, the thrashing administered by Mr Salis having been effectual in its way.

He was extremely anxious, too, about Leo; for unconsciously a new interest was awakening in him, and he felt that no case in which he had been engaged had ever caused him more anxiety than this. So he hurried on to his patient’s room, where the fever was growing more intense, and the flushed face was rolled from side to side upon the white pillow.

“Just the same, sir,” said Mrs Milt, as he asked a few eager questions. “She’s been going on like that ever since you left. Isn’t she very bad? Hark at her breath.”

“Very bad, Milt,” said the doctor gravely; “and if matters go on like this I shall send over to King’s Hampton for – ”

“No, no; don’t you do that, sir,” said the old housekeeper sharply. “If you can’t save her no one can.”

“Why, Milt!” exclaimed the doctor wonderingly.

“Oh! you needn’t look like that, sir. I know you. It’s a deal of wherrit you give me with your awkward ways and irregular hours; but I will say this for you, there isn’t a cleverer doctor going.”

“And yet you walked over to King’s Hampton to the other doctor when you were ill.”

“Well, you had put me out so just then, and I felt as if I would sooner have died than come to you.”

“Ugh! you obstinate old thing,” said North. “There, I’m going down to talk to Mr Salis for a while; then I shall come and take your place for six hours while you go and lie down.”

“Oh!” ejaculated Mrs Milt; and she tightened her lips and remained silent for a few moments, while her master re-examined his patient. Then, drawing herself up: “I may be obstinate, sir, but I think I know my duty in a case of illness. I’m here to watch by Miss Leo Salis’s bedside, and here I’m going to stay.”

“Mrs Milt,” said the doctor sternly, “the first duty of a nurse is to obey instructions, as you well know. Now, no more talking, but sit down till I return.”

Mrs Milt looked tighter than ever, and her rigid stay-bone gave a crack, but she obeyed; while the doctor went down to where Salis and Mary were anxiously awaiting his report.

“I meant to have had some tea ready for you,” said Mary, after hearing what he had to say; “but Dally is missing. She must have gone to her grandfather’s cottage.”

The doctor uttered a loud “Humph!” and then remarked that he could wait.

He had to wait some time, as Dally had gone to keep an appointment in the meadows, and had come upon a figure leaning against a great willow pollard on the river’s brink.

The figure started forward out of the darkness and caught her arm, with the result that Dally uttered a little affected squeal.

“La, Mr Candlish! how you made me jump!”

“Why, what brings you here?” he cried, passing his arm round the girl’s waist.

“Now, do adone, sir; you’ve no business to touch me like that. What would Joe Chegg say?”

“That I was a wise man, and that it was the prettiest little waist in Duke’s Hampton.”

“Please keep your fine speeches for Miss Leo, and talk about her waist, sir, and let me go. I only come for a walk.”

“Nonsense! tell me. You’ve got a message?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“You – you have a letter?”

“No,” said Dally, shaking her head, and struggling just a little for appearance’ sake.

“Is she coming, then?”

“No, she isn’t; for she’s too ill.”

“Eh? Nonsense!”

“But indeed she is, sir, and confined to her bed.”

“And she sent you, Dally. Oh! how good of her.”

“No, nor she didn’t send me neither, Mr Candlish; and do let go. You shouldn’t.”

“Has she caught a cold, Dally?”

“Horrid bad one; and she’s gone right off her head.”

“Gammon!”

“She has, indeed, sir; and me and cook had to hold her down: she was so bad.”

“Hold her down?”

“Yes; and she kept on talking in a hurry like, all about the hunting and falling in the water.”

“Did she say anything about me?” said Tom Candlish eagerly.

“About you? I should think not, indeed. You men seem to think that ladies are always thinking about you. Such stuff!”

Then a long amount of whispering took place, Tom Candlish being one of those gentlemen who never fret after the absent, but possess a sailor-like power of taking the good the gods provide.

At the end of five minutes there was the sound of a smart smack – not a kiss, but the contact of a palm upon a cheek.

Then, from out the darkness came the expression, “You saucy jade!” following upon the rush of feet in flight.

A minute later the swing gate leading into the Rectory grounds was heard to clap to, and Tom Candlish stopped in his pursuit and walked home across the fields.

Chapter Eighteen.
Leo makes a Confession

“Yes, doctor, I’m better, and you needn’t come again.”

“Yes, you’re better, Moredock. Seen any more ghosts?”

“Nay; I never see no ghosts. I only see what I did see; but how’s young miss up yonder?”

Horace North’s brow wrinkled, and his voice sounded stern.

“Ill, Moredock – seriously ill. Violent fever.”

“Fever – fever!” said the old man, backing away with unwonted excitement.

“Yes, fever, you selfish old rascal!” cried the doctor irascibly. “You oughtn’t to be afraid of catching a fever at your time of life.”

“But I am, doctor – I am,” said the old man, with a peculiar change in his voice. “You see, I’ve just been ill, and it would be very hard to be ill again. Is – is it ketching?”

“No!” roared the doctor angrily; “not at all. There, take care of yourself, and don’t go to the church again in the dark.”

“I shall go to the church as often as I like and when I like,” grumbled the old man. “It’s my church; but, I say, doctor, is it likely to be – eh? – you know – job for me?”

North looked at him with an expression of horror and loathing that made the old man stare.

“Why, you hideous old ghoul!” he cried; “do you want me to strangle you? Ugh!”

He hurried out of the cottage, and Moredock rose slowly and followed him as far as the door.

“What’s he mean by that? Gool? What’s a gool? He’s been drinking. I see his hand shake; that’s what’s the matter with him; and I’m glad he hasn’t got to mix no physic for me this morning. Now, I wonder what he takes. Them doctors goes into their sudgeries, and mixes theirselves drops as makes ’em on direckly. Old Borton used to, and I buried him. He’s making a bad job of it up at the Rectory, and he’s drinking, but I put him out by speaking of it. Ay, there he goes in at the Rect’ry gate. Wonder whether they’ll have a tomb for her, or a plain grave.”

Leo Salis had looked for some hours past as if one or the other would be necessary, and Moredock’s words had seemed to North as if each bore a sting.

So bad was the patient that when he reached the Rectory that day he decided to stay.

“I’d say, send for other advice directly, Salis,” he said drearily; “but if you had the heads of the profession here, they could do nothing but wait. The fever will run its course. We can do nothing but watch.”

“And pray,” said Salis sternly.

“And pray,” said the doctor, repeating his words. “Will you send over to the town, and telegraph?”

“No,” replied the curate. “I have confidence in you, North.”

He said no more, but turned into his study to hide his emotion, while North crossed to where poor helpless Mary lay back in her chair, looking white and ten years older as her eyes sought his, dumbly asking for comfort.

He took her hand, and kissed it, retaining it in his for a few minutes, as he stood talking to her, trying to instil hope, and little thinking of the agony he caused.

“I’ll go to her now,” he said. “There, try and be hopeful and help me to cheer up poor Hartley. He wants comfort badly. I’ll come and tell you myself if there is any change.”

“The truth,” said Mary faintly.

“The truth? Yes: to you,” he said meaningly; and his words seemed to convey that she was so old in suffering that she could bear to be told anything, though perhaps it might be withheld from her brother.

Mrs Milt, who had been an untiring watcher by the sick-bed, made her report – one that she had had to repeat again and again – of restless mutterings and delirium: otherwise no change.

“No, Mrs Milt, we have not reached the climax yet,” said North, sighing.

“There, go and lie down, my good soul,” he added after a short examination; “you must be tired out.”

“Tired, but not tired out, sir,” said the old lady. “Poor child! she has something on her mind, too, which frets her.”

“Indeed!” said North. “Yes,” continued Mrs Milt, in a whisper. “She keeps muttering about telling him something – confessing, she calls it sometimes.”

“Some old trouble come up into her brain,” said the doctor; and he sat down by the bedside, to gaze at Leo’s flushed face as she lay there with her eyes half closed, apparently sleeping heavily now.

“Not yet, not yet,” sighed North, as he took the hot, dry hand in his, and a shiver ran through him as he thought of the old sexton’s words, and wondered whether he would be able to save her – so young and beautiful – from so sad a fate.

“Poor child!” he said, half aloud; and then he sat on, hour after hour, wondering whether it would be possible to do more; whether he had done everything that medical skill could devise; and finally, as he came to the conclusion that he had thoroughly done his duty by his patient, his heart sank, and he owned to himself that in some instances he and the rest of the disciples of the great profession were singularly impotent, and merely attendants on Nature’s will.

Salis came up from time to time, to enter the room softly, and mutely interrogate his friend, and then go sadly back to his study – where Mary sat with him – to give her such news as he had to bear, and join with her in watching and praying for the wilful sister they both so dearly loved.

It was getting towards nine o’clock on the gloomy, stormy winter’s night when, after softly replenishing the fire, as North was returning to his place by the bed, he heard a faint sigh, and bending down over his patient, he found that her eyes were wide open – not in a fixed, delirious stare, full of excitement, but calm and subdued, while a sweet smile passed into her expression as his face neared hers.

“Is that dreadful old woman there?” she whispered.

“No,” he said, laying his hand upon her forehead. “I am alone.”

“Then I will speak,” she said, in a low, passionate voice. “You have not known – you have not believed it possible – but tell me, I have been very ill?”

“Yes,” he said gently, “you have been ill; but don’t talk – try and rest.”

“I have been very ill, and I may die, and then you would never know,” she whispered quickly. “It is no time, then, for a foolish, girlish reserve. I may have been light and frivolous – coquettish too – but beneath it all I have loved you, and you alone. I do love you with all my heart.”

Two soft, white arms were thrown about Horace North’s neck, to draw him closer to his patient’s gently heaving breast.