Was she wounded? or dead?
Mercy raised one helpless hand, and laid her fingers on the
wrist. While she was still vainly trying to feel for the beating
of the pulse, Surgeon Surville (alarmed for the ladies) hurried
in to inquire if any harm had been done.
Mercy called to him to approach. "I am afraid the shell has
struck her," she said, yielding her place to him. "See if she is
badly hurt."
The surgeon's anxiety for his charming patient expressed itself
briefly in an oath, with a prodigious emphasis laid on one of the
letters in it--the letter R. "Take off her cloak," he cried,
raising his hand to her neck. "Poor angel! She has turned in
falling; the string is twisted round her throat."
Mercy removed the cloak. It dropped on the floor as the surgeon
lifted Grace in his arms. "Get a candle," he said, impatiently;
"they will give you one in the kitchen." He tried to feel the
pulse: his hand trembled, the noise and confusion in the kitchen
bewildered him. "Just Heaven!" he exclaimed. "My emotions
overpower me!" Mercy approached him with the candle. The light
disclosed the frightful injury which a fragment of the shell had
inflicted on the Englishwoman's head.
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