"Oh, dammitall! I say, it's a rotten shame, isn't it? And all on account of me--that superb young thing taking hedges like a hunter! Oh, come now, you know I--it hurts me all the way through. I wish I'd let her catch me! What would she have done to me? I wouldn't mind being pulled about a bit--or anything--if it would have prevented her injury. By gad, you know, I'd even have eaten her plum cake, frosting and all, to have saved her such a fate." The girl's eyes searched his. "That was not the most tragic part of it, Lord Marque." "God bless us! Was there anything more?" "Yes. . . . She was in love with you." "With--with _me_?" he repeated, bewildered. "Yes. As a young, romantic girl she fell in love with you. She was a curious child--like all the Guernseys, a strange mixture of impulse and constancy, of romance and determination. If she had fallen in love with Satan she would have remained constant. But she only fell in love with young Marque. . . . And she loves him to this day." "That--that's utterly impossible!" he stammered. "Didn't she become a suffragette and carry a banner and chase me and vow to make me eat my own words frosted on a terrible plum cake?" "Yes. And all the while she went on loving you." "How do you know?" he demanded, incredulously. "She confided in me." "In _you_!" "I knew her well, Lord Marque. . . . Not as well as I thought I did, perhaps; yet, perhaps better than--many--perhaps better than anybody. . . . We were brought up together." "You were her governess?" "I--attempted to act in a similar capacity. . . . She was difficult to teach--very, very difficult to govern. . . . I am afraid I did not do my best with her." "Why did you leave her to come here?" he asked. She made no reply. "Where is she now?" She looked out into the cinders of the West, making no answer. He gazed at her in silence for a long time; then: "Is she really lame?" "Yes." "Very?" "It is hip disease." "But--but that can be cured!" he exclaimed. "It is now perfectly curable. Why doesn't she go to Vienna or to New York----" "She is going." "She ought to lose no time!" "She is going. She only learned the nature of her trouble very recently." "You mean she has been lame all this time and didn't know what threatened her?" "She was--too busy to ask. Finally, because she did not get well, she called in a physician. But she is a very determined girl; she refused to believe what the physician told her--until--very recently----" "See here," he said, "are you in constant communication with her?" "Constant." "Then tell her you know me. Tell her how terribly sorry I am. Tell--tell her that I'll do anything to--to--tell her," he burst out excitedly, "that I'll eat her plum cake if that will do her any good--or amuse her--or anything! Tell her to bake it and frost it and fill it full of glue, for all I care--and express it to you; and I'll eat every crumb of that silly speech I made----"