The reaction from despair had been too much for her; it had come too suddenly; at the first word of reassurance, at the first ray of dawning hope, she had fainted.
High-strung natures, intrepid in the face of danger, are apt to such collapses in the moment of deliverance; and, whatever the nature of the lady's trouble, Cleggett gained from her swoon a sharp sense of its intensity.
Cleggett was not used to having beautiful women faint and fall into his arms, and he was too much of a gentleman to hold one there a single moment longer than was absolutely necessary.

He turned his head rather helplessly towards the vehicle in which the lady had arrived.

To his consternation and surprise it had turned around and the chauffeur was in the act of starting back towards Fairport.

But he had left behind him a large zinc bucket with a cover on it, a long unpainted, oblong box, and two steamer trunks; on the oblong box sat a short, squat young man in an attitude of deep dejection.
"Hi there! Stop!" cried Cleggett to the chauffeur.

That person stopped his machine.