Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/562

 almost in abandonment. Never had the inward conflict between right and wrong been so great as at that moment. Which should she give up her father, her friends, her duty?—or him whom, with that all-impassioned love, she loved.

Jane stooped to kiss her. “Let it end from this day,” she whispered. “Do not forget again what is due to yourself and to us by running out of the house for any stolen interview. It is not seemly; it is not right.”

Jane quitted the room; it was best to leave Laura’s sobs to subside alone. As she descended the stairs and passed the staircaise window, she saw her father coming up one of the garden paths. Almost at the same moment, a blow, a crash of glass, and a shriek of terror, sounded from below. Jane flew down the stairs; Judith rushed forth from the kitchen; and Pompey, his great eyes glaring, emerged from some peculiar sanctum of his own, sacred to knives and boots. They stared at each other in the hall.

“Who is it?” exclaimed Jane. “What has happened? I thought it must be you, Pompey, come to harm amidst the bottles.”

“Don’t stand there asking who it is,” burst from the choleric captain, as he came flinging into the hall, “It’s Lucy. She has fallen through the drawing-room window, and perhaps killed herself.”

They ran to the drawing-room. Lucy lay on the carpet close to the window, which opened, you know, on the ground. In running heedlessly towards it to say something to her father, her foot had slipped and she fell with her arms against the window, breaking two of its panes The palm of one hand was cut, and the inside of the other wrist. They raised her and placed her in a chair, but the wrist bled dreadfully. Judith grew pale.

“There may be an artery divided, sir,” she whispered to her master. “If so, she may bleed to death.”

“You rascal, to stand there gaping when the child’s dying!” cried the hot captain, “Go along and get help.”

“Is it Misser Carlton I am to get?” asked the unlucky Pompey.

Down came the captain’s stick within an inch of Pompey’s head, and Laura, all dismayed at the disturbance, came in just in time to hear the captain’s answer.

“That villain Carlton! No, sir, not if the whole house were dying together. Get Mr. Grey here, you useless animal. Not the one who poisoned the lady’s draught, sir, do you hear? he shouldn’t come within a mile of me. Find the other one, and be quick over it.”

Poor, affectionate, well-meaning Pompey would certainly have been as quick as his best legs allowed him, but he was saved the trouble of using them. At the very instant they were speaking, Mr. John Grey was seen driving past in his gig. Judith ran out.

The groom heard her call, and pulled up, and Mr. Grey hastened in with Judith when he found what was the matter. In ten minutes the wounds were washed and strapped together with adhesive plaster. Lucy had cried very much with terror.

“Shall I die? Shall I die?” she asked of Mr. Grey, her little heart beating, her hands trembling.

“No, of course not,” he replied. “What made you think of that?”

“I heard them talk about my dying; I am sure I did,” sobbed Lucy, who was of an excitable and also of a timid temperament; “and I heard them say perhaps the artery was divided. Does that kill people?”

“Not always,” said Mr. Grey. “Keep your hands still, like a brave little girl.”

“Are you sure I shall not die?”

“Quite sure; you are not in any danger. Look here,” he added, turning up his coat-sleeve and wristband, and exhibiting his wrist to Lucy, while the others stood around, the captain in rather a subdued mood. “Do you see that scar?”

“Yes, sir,” was Lucy’s answer.

“Well, once, when I was younger than you, I fell against a window just as you have done, and cut my wrist. There was danger in my case, and shall I tell you why?—the cut divided the artery. Though who made you so wise about arteries,” added Mr. Grey smiling, “I don’t know. But you see, Miss Lucy—I think I heard them call you Lucy, and I like the name, it was my mother’s—you see, where there is great danger there is generally great help. My father, a surgeon, was in the room when I did it: he took up the artery immediately, and the danger was past. Now with this foolish little hurt of yours, although the strappings of diachylon look so formidable, there has not been any danger, for the artery is not touched. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” replied Lucy, “and I believe you. I shall not be afraid now. Shall you come and see me again?”

“I will come in this afternoon just to see that the strappings remain in their places. And now good-bye, and be sure you keep your hands still.”

“I think there must be holiday after this,” said Jane, with a smile.

“Oh, decidedly holiday,” returned Mr.