The rest of the school have turned to the right and disappeared from view. Hargreaves, horror-struck, almost stunned, does not follow for a moment, and only the Chesnut with its helpless burden dashes on and on. Turning sharply to the left he gallops furiously--so furiously that all obstacles give way before him. On and on, on and on! till the gardens are left long behind, and the road by the Park is reached, while the poor pale little rider clings desperately on with all her might and main for dear life. Suddenly the horse swerves to the right down a narrow street, and losing her hold, the girl falls off. Pray God that the horror of her fate is over! _but no!_ The tiny foot is entangled in the stirrup, and for nearly thirty yards the brute drags her along, when all at once he stops dead short, frightened and quivering, and the jerk snaps the stirrup leather in two. _But it is a little too late!_ They pick her up, a little white dainty thing. Her hat has fallen off, and her long hair--angels’ hair, as Hargreaves has called it--streams down in such long rich shining waves that it seems to envelop the small slender figure in an armour of burnished gold. She is not dead--her blue eyes, blue as the sunny sky--are quite wide open, and some one, a slight young fellow, who has just ridden breathlessly up, falls down prone on his shaking knees and looks into them with the poor piteous look of a faithful hound. “Miss Mirabelle, Miss Mirabelle!” he calls in wild despairing tones. But she cannot rebuke him now for his formal address, poor little soul! Presently her eyelids droop, and the long curling lashes rest close against cheeks that are almost ashy now. They lift her up gently and carry her--“Home,” the home she had left only two hours before gay and blithesome as a bird and so full of life, and when it is reached they take her straight into the library, the door of which is ajar, and laying her down on the couch, they leave her, all but one, and he does not enter the room that contains her, but stands trembling near the threshold. Another moment and the awful thing that has happened is known to all in the house, and Hargreaves shrinks away still further as father, mother, sisters of the girl he loves pass him with scared faces and stricken hearts to find Baby--_so!_ Not a word is spoken. At such a moment what word can be said? Even Lady Beranger bows her proud head beneath the fiat of Heaven, while Lord Beranger sobs aloud over this little one--this brightest, merriest one of all the flock. After a moment, revived by a stimulant, Baby opens her pretty blue eyes. “Don’t cry, governor!” she says in a voice so faint--_so faint!_--that it seems to come already from that distant shore. “It serves me right! I was going to leave you--I was----” She stops, struggling for breath.