Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/59

 Poppet's scream of terror seemed to have exhausted her powers of expression. She could only gasp and, trembling against her mother's heart, point to the door. Rose put the child behind her, and, throbbing with all the fierce courage of a tigress in defence of her young, went to confront the thing which had drawn that shriek of fear from Poppet.

In the arbour stood Sir Ian Hereward, ashen gray, and aged by ten years since Rose had seen him last. With one hand he grasped a vine-draped support of the arbour, and his weight seemed to hang from it, as if it alone kept him from falling. He was staring straight ahead like a person who walks in his sleep, and sees only the passing of his own dream. There was blood on the hand which clutched the rustic pole, and blood on the hand that crumpled, unconsciously, his red-stained Panama hat. He did not appear to see Mrs. Barnard, until she gasped out, "Good heavens, sir, what's happened?" Then his eyes seemed to come to life, from their dead stare, and found the woman's wholesome face, like a light in darkness.

"Tom — where's Tom?" he asked.

The fancy came to Rose that his voice sounded like a voice from a tomb, and a great pity for the man overwhelmed her. He had been stricken by some appalling blow, she saw. Probably there had been an accident, but no physical hurt which had befallen him could have made the hero of many battles look like a