a prop for my suffering sister; and so I left him to sort out his manly feelings in peace, and turned my attention where it was the more necessary.
We had progressed perhaps one half the full length of the garden walk, when Cassandra begged to rest upon a bench; such dizzyness as overwhelmed her, coupled with a throbbing at the temples, nearly dropping her where she stood. I bit my lip, and wished for some greater aid— my brother, perhaps, or even Eliza—while Lucy Armstrong satisfied her tender feelings in repeated enquiries of Cassandra, and the triumphant production of the smelling salts. At last my sister rose, and managed to regain the house; whereupon Captain Fielding sent for his carriage and bade the housemaid fetch some brandy. This last having been administered, Cassandra sat back upon the settee with streaming eyes and a choking cough, unaccustomed as she is to strong spirits; and turned to me with all the terror of her infirmity upon her face.
“Jane!” she cried, though her voice was but a whisper; “I had thought myself completely recovered! It was not so very great an injury; the rest of my dear family suffered little from the coach's overturning; and? am several days removed from the event. And yet my present pain is unbearable. Can it be that I have received a greater knocking than was at first understood? Or that Mr. Dagliesh has mistaken the extent of the malady?”
“Such fretful thoughts cannot improve your prospects for the remainder of our travel home,” I said gendy, as the sound of wheels upon the gravel revealed the barouche as even then standing before the door. “We will consult with Mr. Dagliesh as soon as ever we may.”
Captain Fielding assisted us to the carriage with the greatest concern alive upon his countenance, and urged the coachman to achieve his two-miles’ journey with all possible speed, though mindful not to jar the lady. And so, with these conflicting orders setded upon his head, poor Jarvis clucked to the horses, and we were off.
The ride itself was uneventful, being spent chiefly in the sort of silence that only arises from great perturbation of spirit; and I sighed with relief as the barouche began the descent into Broad Street, and the cheerful lights of Wings cottage appeared through the growing dusk.
We were not to be afforded the comfort of an uneventful arrival, however—for Cassandra had only to set foot to paving stone, before crumpling in a faint upon the ground.
AND SO MR. DAGLIESII WAS SUMMONED AT THE BEHEST OF MY brother Henry, who was even then within the cottage awaiting our return, the better to give his fondest adieux—for he and Eliza depart for Weymouth today, to tour the town and observe the embarkation of the Royal Family.3 From thence they should travel to Ibthorpe, and by a leisurely route return to No. 16 Michael's Place, and their neat little home. But at the outcry and bustle from the very gate, my dear brother rushed to our assistance; and his anxiety was the more extreme, from being motivated by surprise. Miss Armstrong and 1 were more sanguine, having journeyed in some anticipation of the event.
I may say that Mr. Dagliesh was very angry; he regarded us all as having precipitated a dangerous relapse, by our determination to force Cassandra over-early into activity; and he ordered the strictest quiet, the administration of broth, and the application alternately of ice and warm compresses, for the relief of my sister's throbbing temples. The poor surgeon's assistant stood some few minutes by her bedside, holding her wrist between his fingers as though intent upon her pulse; but I knew him to be utterly inattentive to the flutter of Cassandra's heart, so clearly were his thoughts fixed upon the agony within his own.
He departed not long thereafter, in search of some ice from the Golden Lion, and assuring us of his return at the earliest hour of the morning; and it remained only for us to determine the wisest course. The consultation of Dagliesh's superior, Mr. Carpenter, was much canvassed, and rejected by my mother, who had learned something to that gendeman's detriment from a recent Lyme acquaintance, one Miss Bonham, who claimed a persistent nervous fever. Henry at last voiced the thought chief within all our minds—that Cassandra should accompany himself and Eliza on their return to London, that trip being expedited by the amendment of the plan, and a determination to proceed with all possible swiftness