Just as Derrice was plaintively revealing the heart-sickness of the disappointed knight, Captain White wriggled toward his wife. "Hippy," he whispered in her ear, "that supper looks good, but you will excuse me from it. I must have a look at H. Robinson." She nodded, and followed him with her eyes as he stole out of sight. On occasions like the present, when the three house servants were withdrawn, the woman from the cottages took charge of affairs at French Cross. This woman Captain White found in the kitchen, gazing at a row of tin covers on the wall as fixedly as if she were mesmerised by them. When he saluted her with a sudden "Good afternoon," she turned slowly. "You might 'a' startled me. It's mortal quiet." "No one round?" inquired Captain White, in his easy manner. "Nobody but a man." "Been here long?" "Nigh on fifteen minutes." "A stranger?" "Yes, powerful fleshy,--more fleshy than I be," and she again fell into a reverie. "Can you give me some warm water?" he asked, pulling the bandage off one of his scratched hands. "You've been a-ripping of yourself," she said, with stupid interest. "Yes; why don't you ask how it happened?" "What odds, so long as you've did it!" "You ain't curious," he remarked, as he splashed his hands in the water she presented to him. "I ain't no call to be. Things get did. What matters how?" He silently washed and dried his hands, and by dint of long staring at them she evolved a proposition. "I'll go get some of that sticky stuff I see in Miss Gastonguay's room." Captain White walked to one of the windows from which he could command a portion of the avenue. No one left the house, no one approached it, and after what seemed to him to be an interminably long time Mrs. Stryper came waddling back. "I ain't got your plaster," she said, deliberately, "'cause Miss Chelda's swounded, and I can't bring her to." "Where is she?" "In her aunt's room." "Where's the stranger?" "I s'pose he's in the library." "Can I do anything?" "Be you good at swounds?" "First-class." "Come on, then," and she began a return trip at a snail's pace. Captain White wound an intricate pattern of footsteps all around her as they went up-stairs. He had never before been in the upper part of this house, and he gave himself up to admiration until he reached the long white bedroom. There he was shocked. Chelda looked badly, and he knelt hastily beside her, and laid his hand on her heart. "Get me some of those bottles, can't you?" he said, pointing to a table,--"something strong. Never mind--I'll do it myself." Some smelling-salts, that made him throw his head back with a jerk, had something of the same enlivening effect upon Chelda. She gasped, made a painful movement of her forehead, and began to lose the sickly pallor overspreading her olive complexion.