kful, for it didn't sound as if
she were much hurt.

Our lamps had gone out, and it was almost pitch dark now, for clouds
covered the moon. But there came a glimmer, which kept growing brighter;
and looking up I saw a man standing with a lantern held over his head,
peering down a steep bank with a look of horror. The same glimmer showed
me something else--Brown's face on the ground, white as a stone, his
eyes wide open with an unseeing stare. I ran to him, and found that I
was pushing Aunt Mary back, as she was trying to get up from somewhere
close at hand. She caught at me, and wouldn't let me go by. "Oh dear, oh
dear!" she was sobbing, and I begged her to tell me if she were hurt.

"No, thank Heaven! I fell on Brown," she said, "and that saved me."

I could have boxed her ears. One would have thought, to hear her, that
he was a sort of fire-escape. I snatched my dress out of her hands, and
knelt down beside poor Brown, who was perhaps dead, all through my
fault--for I saw now that I ought never to have let Jimmy Payne drive
the car. By this time the man with the lantern (it was the carter who
had made the trouble for us) had slid down the steep bank, and come
straight to where I was kneeling. "_Ah, mademoiselle, il est mort!_" he
exclaimed. How I did hate him! I screamed out, "He isn't, he isn't!" but
it was only to make myself believe it wasn't true, and I couldn't help
crying--big hot tears that splashed right down into Brown's eyes. And I
suppose it was their being so hot that woke him up, for he did wake up,
and looked straight at me, dazed at first, then sensibly--such a queer
effect, the intelligence and brightness taking the place of that
frightened stare. The first thing he said was, "Are you hurt?" And I
said "No"; and then I discovered that I was holding his hand as fast as
ever I could--only think, holding your _chauffeur's_ hand!--but such a
brave, faithful _chauffeur_, never thinking of his own face, as I had of
mine, but of _me_.

That made me laugh and draw back, and we both said something about being
glad. And I wanted to help him, but he didn't need any help, and was up
like an arrow the next second. And then, for the first time, I saw the
car, standing upright with Jimmy Payne, sitting in it, hanging on like
grim death to the steering-post, which he was embracing as if he were a
monkey on a stick.

I _did_ laugh at that--one does laugh more when something dreadful has
nearly happened, but not qu