While they were talking, Pica managed to get off the Captain's outer clothes; but as they were partly wet with rain, the bed was now damp. He therefore went and got the new camp bedstead and set it up, spread dry blankets and sheets over it, and lifted Ugo to it without letting the injured foot hang down, for he was a fairly strong man and was far from clumsy.
The change had just been successfully made when a motor was heard coming up the short stretch from the high-road to the house, and Pica hastened downstairs to open the door for the surgeon. To his surprise, but much to his satisfaction, the Princess Chiaromonte was the first to get out in the rain, bareheaded, but muffled in a waterproof. She had no footman and no umbrella, and she made a quick dash for the door, followed at once by Doctor Pieri. She recognised the handsome orderly and smiled at him as she shook the rain-drops from her hair and then gave him her cloak.
'Is he badly hurt?' she asked quickly; but she saw from Pica's face that it was not a matter of life and death, and she did not wait for his answer. 'We will go upstairs at once,' she added, leading the way to the steps.
On learning that Ugo was already in bed, she said she would wait in the large sitting-room while the doctor went in to see what could be done. If the Captain would see her, she would speak to him when Pieri had finished his work.
Nearly three-quarters of an hour passed before he joined her.
'It is a bad fracture,' he said, 'and it will require an operation if he is not to be lamed for life. I should much prefer to perform it in a proper place. There is none better than the private hospital of the White Sisters and it is by far the nearest. Do you happen to know the place?'
The Princess said that she did and that she was a patroness of the Convent. The surgeon observed that it was now past eleven, and that the patient could not be moved before morning. If she agreed with him and would lend her motor for the purpose, he would communicate with the hospital and take the Captain there himself between eight and nine o'clock. For the present he needed no special nursing, and the orderly seemed to be an unusually intelligent young fellow, who could be trusted and was sincerely attached to his master. The Princess agreed to everything, and asked whether the Captain wished to see her.