"Who so happy as I?" thought Nea, as she tripped through the great empty rooms of Belgrave House, with her hands full of golden primroses; "how delicious it is only to be alive on such a morning."
Alas for that happy spring-tide, for the joyousness and glory of her youth. Little did Nea guess as she flitted, like a white butterfly, from one flower vase to another, that her spring-tide was already over, and that the cloud that was to obscure her life was dawning slowly in the east.
I have no reason than a woman's reason; I think him so, because I think him so.
Before noon there was terror and confusion in Belgrave House. Nea, flitting like a humming-bird from flower to flower, was suddenly startled by the sound of heavy jolting footsteps on the stairs, and, coming out on the corridor, she saw strange men carrying the insensible figure of her father to his room. She uttered a shrill cry and sprung toward them, but a gentleman who was following them put her gently aside, and telling her that he was a doctor, and that he would come to her presently, quietly closed the door.
Nea, sitting on the stairs and weeping passionately, heard from a sympathizing bystander the little there was to tell.
Mr. Huntingdon had met with an accident in one of the crowded city lanes. His horse had shied at some passing object and had thrown him--here Nea uttered a low cry--but that was not all.
His horse had flung him at the feet of a very Juggernaut, a mighty wagon piled with wool bales nearly as high as a house. One of the leaders had backed on his haunches at the unexpected obstacle; but the other, a foolish young horse, reared, and in another moment would certainly have trodden out the brains of the insensible man, had not a youth--a mere boy--suddenly rushed from the crowded footpath and thrown himself full against the terrified animal, so for one brief instant retarding the movement of the huge wagon while Mr. Huntingdon was dragged aside.
It had all happened in a moment; the next moment the horses were plunging and rearing, with the driver swearing at them, and the young man had sunk on a truck white as death, and faint from the pain of his sprained arm and shoulder.
"Who is he?" cried Nea, impetuously, "what have they done with him?"