She rushed to the bell and rang again, and again, and again, hardly taking her finger from the little ivory knob, listening as the shrill electric peal vibrated through the silent house. It seemed an age before there was any response, and then three servants came hurrying in—the butler, and one of the footmen, and a scared housemaid. They saw her standing there, tall and white, dabbled with blood. “Some one has been trying to murder him,” she cried. “Didn’t you hear a gun?” No, no one had heard anything till they heard the bell. The two men lifted Sir Godfrey from the floor to the sofa, and did all they could do to staunch that deadly wound in his neck, from which the blood was still pouring—a bullet wound. Lambert, the butler, was afraid that the bullet had pierced the jugular vein. If there was life still, it was only ebbing life. Juanita flung herself on the ground beside that prostrate form and kissed the unconscious lips, and the cold brow, and those pallid cheeks; kissed and cried over him, and repeated again and again that the wound was not mortal. “Is any one going for the doctor?” she cried, frantically. “Are you all going to stand still and see him die?” Lambert assured her that Thomas was gone to the stable to wake the men, and despatch a mounted messenger for Mr. Dolby, the family doctor. “He might have helped us more if he had run there himself,” cried Juanita. “There will be time lost in waking the men, and saddling a horse. I could go there faster.” She looked at the door as if she had half resolved to rush off to the village in her dressing-gown and slippers. And then she looked again at that marble face, and again fell upon her knees by the sofa, and laid her cheek against that bloodless cheek, and moaned and cried over him; while the butler went to get brandy, with but little hope in his own mind of any useful result. “What an end to a honeymoon!” he said to himself despondently. CHAPTER VI. “Is not short payne well borne that bringes long ease, And layes the soule to sleepe in quiet grave? Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life....” The morning dawned upon a weeping household. There was nothing to be done when Mr. Dolby, the village surgeon, arrived at Cheriton House. He could only examine the death-wound and express his opinion as to its character. “It was certainly not self-inflicted,” he told the servants, as they stood about him in a stony group. “Self-inflicted, indeed!” echoed Lambert, “I should think not. If ever there was a young man who had cause to set store by his life it was Sir Godfrey Carmichael. It’s murder, Mr. Dolby, rank murder.” “Yes, I’m afraid it’s murder,” said Dolby, with an air which implied that suicide would have been a bagatelle in comparison. “But who can have done it, and why?” he asked after a pause.