"
"You mistake him," said Lucy, earnestly; "he will be grateful for my
sake and for his own. You do not know my father, or you are deceiving me
with a story of his safety, when he has already fallen a victim to the
fury of that animal."
When she had caught this idea, she started from the ground and
endeavoured to press towards the avenue in which the accident had taken
place, while the stranger, though he seemed to hesitate between the
desire to assist and the wish to leave her, was obliged, in common
humanity, to oppose her both by entreaty and action.
"On the word of a gentleman, madam, I tell you the truth; your father
is in perfect safety; you will expose yourself to injury if you venture
back where the herd of wild cattle grazed. If you will go"--for, having
once adopted the idea that her father was still in danger, she pressed
forward in spite of him--"if you WILL go, accept my arm, though I am not
perhaps the person who can with most propriety offer you support."
But, without heeding this intimation, Lucy took him at his word. "Oh,
if you be a man," she said--"if you be a gentleman, assist me to find my
father! You shall not leave me--you must go with me; he is dying perhaps
while we are talking here!"
Then, without listening to excuse or apology, and holding fast by the
stranger's arm, though unconscious of anything save the support which
it gave, and without which she could not have moved, mixed with a vague
feeling of preventing his escape from her, she was urging, and almost
dragging, him forward when Sir William Ashton came up, followed by the
female attendant of blind Alice, and by two woodcutters, whom he had
summoned from their occupation to his assistance.
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