"It was dreadfully audacious of me to stop you," Christina answered, smiling in response to his smile, "but I do so want to get to the doctor as fast as I can, and when I saw the car, I thought of nothing but what I wanted to do."

Rupert glanced back at her, an amused twinkle in his grey eyes.

"You don't let obstacles hinder your attaining your goal?" he questioned.

"I--don't think I do," was the reply; "and especially when it is a matter of real importance--one of life and death." By this time they were whirling along the road at a pace which rendered conversation difficult, and Christina sat back in her comfortable seat, looking first at the man who had spoken to her, and was now steering the machine, then at his companion who sat beside him. Now that Rupert was no longer smiling pleasantly at her, she observed how grave and worn was his face, what new deep lines seemed to have carved themselves about his mouth, what a shadow of pain, or of some gnawing anxiety lay in his eyes.

"He is in trouble," the girl thought, her heart contracting with pity, as her eyes rested on the strong, rugged face. "I wish I could help him; he looks as if he had lost something he cared for with all his soul, and it is breaking his heart!"

From the strong face, with its lines of pain, her eyes turned to his companion--a slight, alert man, military in build--and with fair, good-humoured features devoid of any marked personality.

His blue eyes had brightened when Christina stopped the car, and whilst she talked to Rupert, he watched her expressive face with growing admiration. They had only proceeded a short distance on their journey, when he turned round to the girl, and said kindly:

"We are going a great pace, and you are not dressed for motoring; you must be cold. Will you wrap yourself in this?" and, drawing from behind him a heavy fur coat, which he had brought as an extra wrap, if necessary, he handed it to Christina, who gratefully rolled herself in its warm folds.

"By Jove! she looks more fetching than ever, with her face looking out of all that fur," the blue-eyed young man reflected, when he again glanced over his shoulder at her, "those green eyes of hers are like no others I ever saw," and Christina, little as she was in the habit of considering such things, could not help noticing how often during their three-miles' drive, the young man turned to look at her, or to shout a remark. The grey-eyed man looked round only once, to say shortly but kindly:

"Quite comfortable?" But even those two words in the vibrating voice, had, as before, an oddly thrilling effect on Christina's pulses.

That rapid drive across the moorland, in the low sunlight of the December afternoon, seemed to her for long afterwards, like part of some extraordinary dream--a dream in which she, and the grey-eyed man, and the beautiful white-faced woman, were all playing parts; a dream which had no real relation at all to the commonplace details of everyday life.

"Here is Manborough," Rupert called out, when, over the brow of a steep hill, they came in sight of cl.u.s.tering red-roofed houses amongst pine woods; "now where does the doctor live? What is his name?"

"Doctor Martin Stokes is his name; I don't know what his house is called, but Manborough is only a small place," Christina answered. "If you will very kindly put me down in the main street, I shall easily find the right house."

"Oh, no, we will drive you up in state," was the laughing rejoinder; and the car once more slowed down, whilst Rupert put a question to a pa.s.sing rustic, who jerked his thumb to the right.

"Doctor's house be up among they pines," he said; "Doctor calls 'un Pinewood Lodge."

"Unromantic and ordinary person, that doctor," said Rupert, with a short laugh; "this country and those woods might inspire a man to invent a name with some sort of poetry in it. Ah! here is the lodge in question--and as ordinary as its name," he concluded, stopping the car before a closed brown gate, through which a well-kept drive led to a red-brick house, that might have been transplanted bodily to these heights, from a London suburb.

"I don't know how to say thank you properly," Christina said a little tremulously, when she stood by the brown gate, helped out of the car by the blue-eyed young man, who had skilfully forestalled Rupert in this act of gallantry; "it is very, very good of you to have helped me, and will you please forgive me for being so bold and stopping you as I did?"

Rupert laughed and held out his hand.

"Don't think twice about it," he said heartily. "I am very glad you did stop the car, and very glad we were able to save so much time for you. I hope the doctor will pull your patient well through the illness." His hand closed over Christina's small one, the blue-eyed man likewise shook her by the hand, and before the door bell of the doctor's house had been answered, the car had whirled out of sight.

"Poor little girl, she was very prettily grateful," Rupert said to his companion. "I wonder whose illness she is agonising over. Plucky thing to do, stopping us as she did."

"She is a young woman of resource," the other answered. "I like that sort of 'git up and git' way of tackling a difficulty. Now, in her place, I should have just begun to think what might have happened if I _had_ stopped somebody's car, by the time the car was two miles further down the road."

"My dear Wilfred, you hit your own character to a nicety," Rupert answered with a laugh; "but it's only your confounded laziness of mind that prevents your being as much on the spot as that little green-eyed girl."

"Very fetching eyes, too," Wilfred mused aloud, "and a smile that she ought to find useful. Can't we come back this way to-morrow, old man?

We might find she wanted some errand done in the opposite direction, and I'll keep a sharp look-out for her all along the road!"

"As it happens, I have every intention of coming back this way," Rupert answered drily, "though not in order to enable you to rescue distressed damsels. You were not intended for a knight-errant, my good Wilfred; leave well alone. But I am bound to come back through Graystone. I promised Cicely that on my way home from Lewes, I would look in on Baba and her new nurse. They are lodging at old Mrs. Nairne's farm, and it's somewhere near Graystone village. Cicely wants to know whether the new nurse is all she should be; we will look in upon them on our way back."

CHAPTER IX.

"A VERY BEAUTIFUL LADY."

The doctor's consulting-room was as uninteresting as the rest of the house, inside and out; and whilst Christina looked at the orthodox red walls, the few conventional engravings, the closely-curtained windows, and the severely correct chairs and tables, a feeling of depression stole over her. Almost unconsciously she had hoped that the doctor of whom she had come in search, would prove to be an individual of no ordinary description; she had an odd fancy that the situation with which he would have to deal, would be one that was out of the common, and the bare thought of sending a commonplace, country doctor to help the beautiful lady with the anguished face, was intolerable to her.

More than once, whilst she sat and waited in the dreary room, whose outlook into the depths of the pine woods was as depressing as everything else about it, she half-rose, with a determination to go elsewhere and seek another doctor. Remembering, however, the urgency of her message, and the uncertainty of finding another medical man within any reasonable distance, she was deterred from acting upon this impulse, though her heart sank with apprehension when the door at last opened. But the man who entered was in no sense the kind of man she had dreaded to see; there was nothing ordinary or commonplace, either in his own personality or in his greeting of her, and Christina could only feel devoutly thankful that she had not been misled by the mere externals of house and furniture.

"Now will you tell me what I can do for you?" The voice was cheery and kind; it gave her a sense of helpfulness, and the man's personality, like his voice, brought into the room an atmosphere of power and strength.

He was a short man, with very bright brown eyes, a clean-shaven face, and a mouth in which humour and determination struggled for the mastery. But beyond and above everything else, it was a reliable face: Christina knew, with a subtle and sure instinct, that whatever this man undertook, would be carried through, if heaven and earth had to be moved to bring about the carrying.

"Doctor Stokes?" she said enquiringly.

"No, I am not Doctor Stokes," he answered. "Doctor Stokes is away; he was summoned away suddenly. My name is Fergusson, and I am doing Doctor Stokes's work."

"I am very glad," Christina exclaimed navely, with a fervour of which she was not aware, until she saw the twinkle of amus.e.m.e.nt in the brown eyes watching her.

"Oh!--I--beg your pardon," she stammered. "I ought not----"

"It is not my pardon you must beg," the doctor answered, laughing a spontaneous, and very boyish laugh, "and I will promise not to tell Doctor Stokes what you said," he added, his eyes still twinkling as he saw the girl's confusion.

"But indeed--please--oh! do understand," she faltered; "I don't know Doctor Stokes. I am a stranger here, and I never saw him in my life, but----"

"Then why were you so glad to find I was not he?" asked Fergusson, his amused look turning to one of puzzled enquiry.

"It sounds so silly," Christina said with seeming irrelevance, "but--I didn't think the person who lived in--this kind of room--was the sort of doctor I wanted to find."

Fergusson threw back his head and laughed.

"Do you judge all humanity by the rooms in which it lives?" he asked.

"n.o.body but a commonplace person could live contentedly in a room like this," Christina answered vehemently, "or call his house Pinewood Lodge, or have a house just like this house."

"I rather agree with you, but Doctor Stokes is a total stranger to me too; we may be libelling him entirely; and--meanwhile, what can I do for you?

"I have come to ask you to go somewhere, on a matter of life and death," she answered, "but----"

"Life and death?"--the doctor's smiling face grew grave--"then we must not delay. Where am I wanted?" He touched a bell by the fireplace.

"I will order the car at once. Tell me all details as briefly as possible."

His humorous accent had dropped; he spoke in terse, business-like tones, his brown eyes looked searchingly at her.

"Bring the car round immediately," he said to a man who answered his bell. "Now, tell me everything quickly," he went on, turning back to Christina.

"Before you go, I have to ask you to promise not to tell any living soul where you have been; and you must swear to tell n.o.body what you see and hear when you get to the house."

Fergusson stared at her blankly.