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"This house, my dear?" It is not Gwen who speaks, but her mother, who has joined the conversation. "Certainly, my love," says the Earl, with a kind of appealing diffidence. "If you have no very strong objection. He can be carried, Sir Coupland says, as soon as the wound is safe from inflammation. Of course he must not be left at the Hall." "Of course not.
Gwen has some hazy idea that there ought to be, if there is not, some official note of death due from the dying, a rattle in the throat at least. Sir Coupland sees her meaning. "In a case of this sort," says he, "sheer loss of blood, the breath may cease so gradually that sound is impossible. All one can say is that there is no breath, and no action of the heart so far as one can tell."
Less than usual vanished to become a vested interest of digestion; more than usual went back to the kitchen for appreciation elsewhere. For Sir Coupland, appealed to, had given a brief intelligent report of the occurrence of the morning. Then followed undertones of conversation apart between him and the Hon. Percival, who had not the heart for a pleasantry, and groups of two or three aside.
Lunch, liberated by what amounted to certainty that the man was not killed, ran riot; almost all its factors taking a little more, thank you! It was brought up on its haunches by being suddenly made aware that Sir Coupland having had something to eat had spoken. He had to repeat his words to reach the far end of the long table.
He sees as she turns to him that all her pride of self-control has given way. She is fighting against an outburst of tears, and her breath comes and goes at will, or at the will of some power that drives it. Sir Coupland may be contemplating speech something it is correct to say, something the cooler judgment will endorse but whatever it is he keeps it to himself.
Then said Gwen, pinning him to truth with the splendour of her eyes: "You are perfectly and absolutely certain, Dr. Merridew, that a momentary gleam of true vision in such a case would be impossible?" "I never said that," said Sir Coupland. "What did you say?" said Gwen. "As improbable as you please, short of impossible. Now I'm off. Impossible's a long word, you know, and very hard to spell."
Then, a moment later, she is aware of what has been done, and exclaims: "Oh dear! why did you send him? Dr. Merridew is at the Castle." For she knew Sir Coupland before he had his knighthood. Thereon the other groom is starting to summon him, but she stops him. She will go herself; then the great man will be sure to come at once.
The barony either gave its name to, or took its name from, a well-known Northumbrian family, of which one of the most prominent members was that Sir John de Coupland who succeeded in capturing David of Scotland at the battle of Neville's Cross not, however, before he had lost some of his teeth by a blow from the mailed fist of that doughty monarch!
He appeared to decide on silence about them, as irrelevant, and went on to something more to the purpose "Perhaps you know if the family are in town any of them?" Miss Dickenson testified to the whereabouts of Lady Gwendolen Rivers, and Sir Coupland wrote it in a notebook.
But somehow I thought you knew." "Only that there was something no idea that he was blind. But I won't betray your confidence." "Thank you. It's only a matter of time, as I gather. But a bad job for him till he gets his sight again." "He will, I suppose, in the end?" "Oh yes in the end. Sir Coupland is cautious, of course. But I don't fancy he's really uneasy.
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