"I must have given you such a fright through my stupidity," he said; but all the time he wondered to see a strange look in her eyes—a look he had never seen there before _off the stage_—as she knelt by him and held his hand in hers. She did not speak; she only looked at him, with a vague absent delight, as if she were listening to music. "Poor creature!" he thought, "she does not know how to say that she is sorry for having hurt me." So he managed to get up a quite confident smile, and struggled to his feet, giving her his hand to raise her also. "I suppose you thought you had killed me," he said, with a laugh, "but it was only the fright knocked me over. I am not hurt at all. Look here, the charge has lodged in the tree." He showed her a splinter or two knocked off the bark of the tree, and a few round holes where the buck-shot had lodged; but at the same time he was conscious of a warm and moist sensation creeping down his side, and down his arm likewise. Further, he pretended not to see that there was a line of red blood trickling gently over his hand, and that her dress had already caught a couple of stains from the same source. "What’s that?" she said, with a terrified look, looking from her own hand, which was likewise stained, to his. "It is blood—you have been hurt, and you won’t tell me. Don’t be so cruel," she added, piteously; "but tell me what I am to do, for I know you are hurt. What shall I do? Shall I run to Hermann? Shall I go for the Count? There is no water about here——" "Sit down on those ferns—that’s what you must do," said Will, "and don’t distress yourself. I suppose one of the spent shot has scratched me, or something like that; but it is of no importance, and you mustn’t say anything about it. When the drive is over, I shall walk home. If I had only a little—a little——" By this time he had sate down, and as he uttered the words, another giddiness came over him, and ha would have fallen back had she not hastily caught him and supported him. "It is the blood," he said, angrily; "one would think I couldn’t afford to lose as much as the scratch of a penknife would let. Will you allow me to take off my coat?—and if you could tie a handkerchief tightly round my arm——" "Oh, why did you not ask me to do so before?" she said, as she helped to uncover the limb that was by this time drenched in blood. "Think of what the deer would have suffered, if you had hit him instead of me," said Will, with a ghastly smile. "He was a dozen yards nearer you. You seem to like long shots." But there was a mute pleading look in her eyes that seemed to appeal against his banter. She seemed to say to him by that dumb expression, "You wrong me. You try to make us strangers by that assumed fun. You do it to cheer me; but you make me a stranger to you, for you are not honest with me." And somehow he read the meaning of her face; and said to her, in a low voice—