“Miss Pimpernel? She is not much hurt. I sent her home in the dogcart; but, Arden, don’t go--look after the road,” Edgar managed to shout to him at last across the farmyard. Arthur took no further thought about keeping Jeanie quiet--except, indeed, that he gave Johnny Timms sixpence to stand and watch at the corner of the road. Edgar, however, was on the spot before he had gone quite away. He saw the work proceeding as he turned in at the gate of the Red House, and asked himself, with a half sneer at his cousin, a half wonder for himself, what made the difference? Edgar had nothing to do with the accident, and yet was taking all this trouble to repair it; whereas he, who was really involved in it, after the first moment, never dreamed of taking any trouble. What was the use, indeed, of thus troubling one’s self about others? He had been weakly, foolishly compunctious at the first moment. Why could he not have left Jeanie to Edgar? Why should he have concerned himself at all about her? Why for her sake, a girl who had never even given him a smile, should he have committed himself thus with the Pimpernels? Arthur Arden cursed his own folly, and the impulse which had made him snatch up Jeanie in his arms instead of Alice. Edgar was there, who would have done it, and taken all the responsibility; and such a piece of Quixotism would not harm Edgar. There was the difference--not in the nature, as that insolent Doctor insinuated, but in the fact that Edgar could afford to be helpful, and liberal, and generous--that it could do him no harm. Whereas he, Arthur, dependent upon circumstances--obliged to keep on good terms with this one, to curry favour with that, to consider how everything would affect his own interests--did not venture to be helpful and sympathetic. That was the true explanation of the whole. A man, when he is rich, can afford to be better, kinder, more self-forgetting than a man who is poor; and, above all, the man who lives by his wits, is the man least capable of sacrifices for others. Arthur Arden was very sorry for himself as he went reluctantly, yet quickly, through the shrubberies of the Red House. He knew he had a _mauvais quart d’heure_ before him. However eager or anxious he might manage to look, he knew very well that the father and mother would never forgive him for having left their child to take her chance, while he cared for the little village girl. He cursed his unhappy impulsiveness as he approached the house of the Pimpernels. Taking trouble about other people was always a mistake, unless they were people who could repay that care. Could not he have left Jeanie alone to take her chance? Was not Jeanie somehow at the bottom of Clare’s caprice, which had thrown out all his calculations a week ago? And now again, no doubt, she had ruined him with the Pimpernels. Poor Arthur Arden!--if he had been the Squire he would have been above all these miserable calculations--all these apprehensions and regrets. The least