Vizard saw her, and cried, “Ah! Help!--she is bleeding to death!”
“She shall not,” said Rhoda. Then to one footman, “Bring a footstool,
_you;”_ to another, _“You_ bring me a cork;” to Vizard, _“You_ hold her
toward me so. Now sponge the wound.”
This done, she pinched the lips of the wound together with her neat,
strong fingers. “See what I do,” she said to Vizard. “You will have to do
it, while I--Ah, the stool! Now lay her head on that; the other side,
man. Now, sir, compress the wound as I did, vigorously. Hold the cork,
_you,_ till I want it.”
She took out of her pocket some adhesive plaster, and flakes of some
strong styptic, and a piece of elastic. “Now,” said she to Vizard, “give
me a little opening in the middle to plaster these strips across the
wound.” He did so. Then in a moment she passed the elastic under the
sufferer's head, drew it over with the styptic between her finger and
thumb, and crack! the styptic was tight on the compressed wound. She
forced in more styptic, increasing the pressure, then she whipped out a
sort of surgical housewife, and with some cutting instrument reduced the
cork, then cut it convex, and fastened it on the styptic by another
elastic. There was no flutter, yet it was all done in fifty seconds.
“There,” said she, “she will bleed no more, to speak of. Now seat her
upright. Why! I have seen her before. This is--sir, you can send the men
away.”'
“Yes; and, Harris, pack up Mr. Severne's things, and bring them down here
this moment.”
The male servants retired, the women held aloof. Fanny Dover came
forward, pale and trembling, and helped to place Ina Klosking in the hall
porter's chair. She was insensible still, but moaned faintly.
Her moans were echoed: all eyes turned. It was Zoe, seated apart, all
bowed and broken--ghastly pale, and glaring straight before her.
“Poor girl!” said Vizard. “We forgot her. It is her heart that bleeds.
Where is the scoundrel, that I may kill him?” and he rushed out at the
door to look for him. The man's life would not have been worth much if
Squire Vizard could have found him then.
But he soon came back to his wretched home, and eyed the dismal scene,
and the havoc one man had made--the marble floor all stained with
blood--Ina Klosking supported in a chair, white, and faintly moaning--Zoe
still crushed and glaring at vacancy, and Fanny sobbing round her with
pity and terror; for she knew there must be worse to come than this wild
stupor.
“Take her to her room, Fanny dear,” said Vizard, in a hurried, faltering
voice, “and don't leave her. Rosa, help Miss Dover. Do not leave her
alone, night nor day.” Then to Miss Gale, “She will live? Tell me she
will live.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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