Meanwhile the return of the two women was strangely delayed. Tea-time came and went without a sign of them. And then the agitating news arrived that the new horse had emphasized his novelty by bolting on the homeward way, and upsetting the carriage at the foot of the hill leading up to the Castle. Gundred was unhurt, and soon appeared, pale and shaken, but intrepid. As for Isabel, her leg had been badly broken.
The next few hours passed in ceaseless bustle. Isabel, unconscious, was carried up to the Castle. Doctors, nurses, medicaments were wired for. Gundred’s courage came nobly to the fore. Despite the shock she herself had sustained, she went calmly, self-denyingly, self-importantly about her business. Kingston, who had seen nothing and suffered nothing of the accident, was far less placid and level-headed than Gundred. The sight of Isabel appalled him; Gundred firmly faced the responsibility, had her brought to the oaken parlour at the end of the old wooden wing, did all that could be done for her till the doctor arrived. When Isabel returned to consciousness it was Gundred who watched over her, comforted her, tried to mitigate her pain; Kingston could not bear to contemplate the horror. Had the sufferer been a man, Kingston, perhaps, might have confronted his groans more stolidly, though even so his sympathetic, emotional temperament must always have been less fitted than Gundred’s cool, unimaginative bravery, to cope with the manifold uglinesses of physical suffering.
At last, however, the telegrams began to bear fruit. The doctor arrived, and matters showed signs of settling down into a more regular train. The bone was duly set, Isabel made comfortable, and hope held out of a speedy and prosperous recovery. A nurse came, and proved a very capable and decisive young person, whose only weakness was for looking-glasses. She was established in the empty upper rooms of the old wooden wing, and gave nightly scandal to the Castle servants by lighting all the candles she could get together, the better to contemplate her charms and curl her hair. Except for this trick of collecting so lavish an illumination and leaving it to take care of itself while she went about her other businesses, she turned out both pleasant and useful. Her charge soon grew to like her, and, within a day or two of the accident, life at Brakelond was subsiding once more into calm and comfort. Helpless Isabel lay in state in the little oaken parlour, where Kingston and Gundred kept her company, hardly leaving her alone from morning to night. There was even, as her recovery satisfactorily advanced, a certain quiet charm about this invalid life. Isabel incapable of movement was rather a softer, more human person than Isabel insolent in perfect vitality and health. Kingston and Gundred enjoyed sitting with her and talking to her. They took it in turns to read aloud, and did everything they could to make the victim’s imprisonment as bearable as possible.