For all answer Celia caught her by the arm and dragged her backwards again--across the hall, for by this time Hertha had got to the foot of the staircase--down a side passage to a door leading out to the grounds. And there, just below the few steps leading from the terrace, for even here there were terraces to descend from as in the front, lay the cause of Celia's agonised screams. It was Winifred, white and unconscious, very, very white, with the half-closed, unseeing eyes, that make the dearest and best known face look strange and dreadful. "Is she dead?" gasped Celia, who was almost as white as her sister. Hertha had stooped down beside poor Winifred, bending very closely over her. "Dead!" she repeated, looking up, "of course not. My dear Celia, you must have more self-control." The rather cold, seemingly unsympathising words brought the young girl more quickly to herself than anything else could have done, which was Hertha's intention, though, in truth, at the first moment she had been nearly as terrified as Celia. "Of course not. She has only fainted. Run and fetch Mrs Grimthorp-- and water--and then, perhaps, Louise. Yes, Louise, tell her quietly so as not to startle her too." Somewhat hurt, but inexpressibly relieved, Celia rushed off. And in a few minutes the crowd of anxious faces and ready hands was only too great. Miss Norreys dismissed them all, while she and the housekeeper set to work to bring Winifred round again. After a while they succeeded: she shivered and opened her eyes, smiled faintly at Hertha, mentioning something about her head, then seemed to relapse into semi-consciousness again. "It is more than a common faint," said Hertha, regretfully. "I fear it may have been something of a sunstroke. Poor child, I hope I was not too hard upon her," she added to herself. Winifred had to be carried into the house, to a bedroom, for there were several such at White Turrets, on the ground floor; the doctor sent for, and worst of all, her father and mother told of the catastrophe, a shock which Hertha and Louise would gladly have spared them had it been possible. And for a few hours there was some serious anxiety. But it gradually dispersed. Hertha's idea had been correct: it was a mild case of sunstroke, aggravated, no doubt, by the unusual agitation and emotion that Winifred had gone through that same morning. By the third day she was much better, though not yet well enough to leave her room. And this was the day on which she was to have returned to London with her friend. "It is rather too bad--don't you think so?" she said to Hertha, "that when I _had_ given in I should be tied by the leg like this, literally,"--for in her fall one ankle had been sprained. "It seems to take away all the--the credit of it, as it were," she went on, with a rueful smile.