net.

It was just round the cliff.

'Run to the carriage and tell the boy to bring it to the place as soon as
you can. Then go to the Harbour Inn and tell them to ride to town for a
doctor. Have they been got out of the water?'

'One lady has.'

'Which?'

'Mrs. Barnet. Mrs. Downe, it is feared, has fleeted out to sea.'

Barnet ran on to that part of the shore which the cliff had hitherto
obscured from his view, and there discerned, a long way ahead, a group of
fishermen standing. As soon as he came up one or two recognized him,
and, not liking to meet his eye, turned aside with misgiving. He went
amidst them and saw a small sailing-boat lying draggled at the water's
edge; and, on the sloping shingle beside it, a soaked and sandy woman's
form in the velvet dress and yellow gloves of his wife.

CHAPTER V

All had been done that could be done. Mrs. Barnet was in her own house
under medical hands, but the result was still uncertain. Barnet had
acted as if devotion to his wife were the dominant passion of his
existence. There had been much to decide--whether to attempt restoration
of the apparently lifeless body as it lay on the shore--whether to carry
her to the Harbour Inn--whether to drive with her at once to his own
house. The first course, with no skilled help or appliances near at
hand, had seemed hopeless. The second course would have occupied nearly
as much time as a drive to the town, owing to the intervening ridges of
shingle, and the necessity of crossing the harbour by boat to get to the
house, added to which much time must have elapsed before a doctor could
have arrived down there. By bringing her home in the carriage some
precious moments had slipped by; but she had been laid in her own bed in
seven minutes, a doctor called to her side, and every possible
restorative brought to bear upon her.

At what a tearing pace he had driven up that road, through the yellow
evening sunlight, the shadows flapping irksomely into his eyes as each
wayside object rushed past between him and the west! Tired workmen with
their baskets at their backs had turned on their homeward journey to
wonder at his speed. Halfway between the shore and Port-Bredy town he
had met Charlson, who had been the first surgeon to hear of the accident.
He was accompanied by his assistant in a gig. Barnet had sent on the
latter to the coast in case that Downe's poor wife should by that time
have been reclaimed from the wav