‘Do not scold him,’ said Michael, in a low voice. ‘The poor lad is frightened out of his senses. He thought you were drowned, and wished for medical assistance. His promptitude in calling for it, and getting rid of responsibility——’ ‘The responsibility of this insane expedition is mine,’ said Eleanor, shortly, beginning to realise the situation. ‘But, indeed, Dr. Langstroth, do not let me keep you here in the cold. We cannot miss the road again, and I am ashamed to have troubled you so much.’ ‘Do not be distressed on my account,’ said Michael, calmly. He had restored the flask to his pocket, and now he picked up the gauntlets which she had pulled off and thrown to the ground, and stood watching her, in the ever-deepening twilight, in silence, for some little time after he had spoken. He felt something unreal and dreamlike in the whole situation—in the shadowy woman’s figure, with its quick, graceful, movements; in the surrounding dark, the rushing stream, the sharp night air. Eleanor said nothing to him, for she felt somewhat embarrassed. She did not wish to trouble him, but when she thought of that five miles of a ride to Bradstane, in the dark, with no guide but William, her courage did not exactly rise. She would have felt very well satisfied to be ordered by a competent authority to hold her tongue and do as she was bidden, and it was this, in effect, which Michael did tell her when he next spoke. ‘Here are your gloves’—he saw she had wrung her habit as well as she could, and he had noted, even in the dusk, the beautiful curves and strong, flexible power of her white hands and wrists—‘there are your gloves; and when you have put them on, the sooner we move forward again, the better for you.’ ‘Yes, I am sure of that. I should very soon be chilled to the bone again, if I stood here,’ she said, drawing on her gloves, and feeling a little thrill of pleased excitement and wonder. ‘This is the second time he has come to my help,’ she informed herself, with accurate recollection of the former circumstance. ‘Now shall I help you?’ said Michael, in his coldest, most civil tone, as William led up the horse. He held his hand for her foot, and in a moment she was in her saddle, remarking— ‘Now I shall be not a bit the worse.’ ‘Perhaps not,’ said Michael, instinctively speaking with greater dryness and curtness as he began to feel a sense of pleasure and interest in the adventure and the heroine of it. He liked her hardihood; hardy she was, for he knew pretty well that she could not be feeling very warm or comfortable, under the circumstances; and the sousing with cold water, and the shock and danger of the accident would have been, as he well knew, excuse enough for hysteria and nervous attacks, in nine cases out of ten. She was evidently no friend to such demonstrations. He mounted his own horse, and they started, William falling behind, thankfully enough.