Standing with bated breath, she heard Dr. Jim himself go to answer the summons, and an instant later Nick's voice came to her, gasping and uneven, but every word distinct.

"Ah, there you are! Thought I should catch you. Man, you're wanted—quick! In heaven's name—lose no time. Grange was drowned early this morning, and—I believe it's killed Daisy. For mercy's sake, come at once!"

There was a momentary pause. Muriel's heart was beating in great sickening throbs. She felt stiff and powerless.

Dr. Jim's voice, brief and decided, struck through the silence. "Come inside and have something. I shall be ready to start in three minutes. Leave your animal here. He's dead beat."

There followed the sound of advancing feet, a hand upon the door, and the next moment they entered together. Nick was reeling a little and holding Jim's arm. He saw Muriel with a sharp start, standing as she had turned from the window. The doctor's brows met for an instant as he put his brother into a chair. He had forgotten Muriel.

With an effort she overcame the paralysis that bound her, and moved forward with shaking limbs.

"Did you say Blake was—dead?" she asked, her voice pitched very low.

She looked at Nick as she asked this question, and it was Nick who answered her in his quick, keen way, as though he realised the mercy of brevity.

"Yes. He and some fisher chaps went out early this morning in an ordinary boat to rescue some fellows on a wreck that had drifted on to the rocks outside the harbour. The lifeboat had been damaged, and couldn't be used. They reached the wreck all right, but there were more to save than they had reckoned on—more than the boat would carry—and the wreck was being battered to pieces. It was only a matter of seconds for the tide was rising. So they took the lot, and Grange went over the side to make it possible. He hung on to a rope for a time, but the seas were tremendous, and after a bit it parted. He was washed up two hours ago. He had been in the water since three, among the rocks. There wasn't the smallest chance of bringing him back. He was long past any help we could give."

He ended abruptly, and helped himself with a jerk to something in a glass that Jim had placed by his side.

Muriel stood dumbly watching. She noticed with an odd, detached sense of curiosity that he was shivering violently as one with an ague. Dr. Jim was already making swift preparations for departure.

Suddenly Nick looked up at her. His eyes were glittering strangely. "I know now," he said, "what you women feel like when you can only stand and look on. We have been looking on—Daisy and I—just looking on, for six mortal hours." He banged his fist with a sort of condensed fury upon the table, and leapt to his feet. "Jim, are you ready? I can't sit still any longer."

"Finish that stuff, and don't be a fool!" ordered Jim curtly.

Muriel turned swiftly towards him. "You'll take me with you!" she said very earnestly.

Nick broke in sharply upon the request. "No, no, Muriel! You're not to go. Jim, you can't—you shan't—take her! I won't allow it!"

But Muriel was clinging to Dr. Jim's arm with quivering face upraised. "You will take me," she entreated. "I was able to help Daisy before. I can help her now."

But even before she spoke there flashed a swift glance between the two brothers that foiled her appeal almost before it was uttered. With a far greater gentleness than was customary with him, but with unmistakable decision, Dr. Jim refused her petition.

"I can't take you now, child. But if Daisy should ask for you, or if there is anything under the sun that you can do for her, I will promise to let you know."

It was final, but she would not have it so. A sudden gust of anger caught her, anger against the man for whose sake she had one night shed so many bitter tears, whom now she so fierily hated. She still clung to Jim. She was shaking all over.

"What does it matter what Nick says?" she urged pantingly. "Why give in to him at every turn? I won't be left behind—just because he wishes it!"

She would have said more. Her self-control was tottering; but Dr. Jim restrained her. "My dear, it is not for Nick's sake," he said. "Come, you are going to be sensible. Sit down and get your breath. There's no time for hysterics. I must go across and speak to my wife before I go."

He looked at Nick who instantly responded. "Yes, you be off! I'll look after her. Be quick, man, be quick!"

But when Dr. Jim was gone, his impatience fell away from him. He moved round the table and stood before her. He was steady enough now, steadier far than she.

"Don't take it too hard," he said. "At least he died like a man."

She did not draw away from him. There was no room for fear in her heart just then. It held only hatred—a fierce, consuming flame—that enabled her to face him as she had never faced him before.

"Why did you let him go?" she demanded of him, her voice deep and passionate, her eyes unwaveringly upon him. "There must have been others. You were there. Why didn't you stop him?"

"I stop him!" said Nick, and a flash of something that was almost humour crossed his face. "You seem to think I am omnipotent."

Her eyes continued to challenge him. "You always manage to get your own way somehow," she said very bitterly, "by fair means or foul. Are you going to deny that it was you who made him write that letter?"

He did not ask her what she meant. "No," he said with a promptitude that took her by surprise. "I plead guilty to that. As you are aware, I never approved of your engagement."

His effrontery stung her into what was almost a state of frenzy. Her eyes blazed their utmost scorn. She had never been less afraid of him than at that moment. She had never hated him more intensely.

"You could make him do a thing like that," she said. "And yet you couldn't hold him back from certain death!"

He answered her without heat, in a tone she deemed most hideously callous. "It was not my business to hold him back. He was wanted. There would have been no rescue but for him. They needed a man to lead them, or they wouldn't have gone at all."

His composure goaded her beyond all endurance. She scarcely waited for him to finish, nor was she wholly responsible for what she said.

"Was there only one man among you, then?" she asked, with headlong contempt.

He made her a curious, jerky bow. "One man—yes," he said. "The rest were mere sheep, with the exception of one—who was a cripple."

Her heart contracted suddenly with a pain that was physical. She felt as if he had struck her, and it goaded her to a fiercer cruelty.

"You knew he would never come back!" she declared her voice quivering uncontrollably with the passion that shook her. "You—you never meant him to come back!"

He opened his eyes wide for a single instant, and she fancied that she had touched him. It was the first time in her memory that she had ever seen them fully. Instinctively she avoided them, as she would have avoided a flash of lightning.

And then he spoke, and she knew at once that her wild accusation had in no way hurt him. "You think that, do you?" he said, and his tone sounded to her as though he barely repressed a laugh. "Awfully nice of you! I wonder what exactly you take me for."

She did not keep him in suspense on that point. If she had never had the strength to tell him before, she could tell him now.

"I take you for a fiend!" she cried hysterically. "I take you for a fiend!"

He turned sharply from her, so sharply that she was conscious of a moment's fear overmastering her madness. But instantly, with his back to her, he spoke, and her brief misgiving was gone.

"It doesn't matter much now what you take me for," he said, and again in the cracked notes of his voice she seemed to hear the echo of a laugh. "You won't need to seek any more protectors so far as I am concerned. You will never see me again unless the gods ordain that you should come and find me. It isn't the way of an eagle to swoop twice—particularly an eagle with only one wing."

The laugh was quite audible now, and she never saw how that one hand of his was clenched and pressed against his side. He had reached the door while he was speaking. Turning swiftly, he cast one flickering, inscrutable glance towards her, and then with no gesture of farewell was gone. She heard his receding footsteps die away while she struggled dumbly to quell the tumult of her heart.



CHAPTER XLIV

LOVE'S PRISONER

Late that evening a scribbled note reached Muriel from Dr. Jim.

"You can do nothing whatever," he wrote. "Daisy is suffering from a sharp attack of brain fever, caused by the shock of her cousin's death, and I think it advisable that no one whom she knows should be near her. You may rest assured that all that can be done for her will be done. And, Muriel, I think you will be wise to go to Mrs. Langdale as you originally intended. It will be better for you, as I think you will probably realise. You shall be kept informed of Daisy's condition, but I do not anticipate any immediate change."

She was glad of those few words of advice. Her anxiety regarding Daisy notwithstanding, she knew it would be a relief to her to go. The strain of many days was telling upon her. She felt herself to be on the verge of a break-down, and she longed unspeakably to escape.

She went to her room early on her last night at Weir, but not in order to rest the longer. She had something to do, something from which she shrank with a strange reluctance, yet which for her peace of mind she dared not leave neglected.

It was thus she expressed it to herself as with trembling fingers she opened the box that contained all her sacred personal treasures.

It lay beneath them all, wrapped in tissue-paper, as it had passed from his hand to hers, and for long she strove to bring herself to slip the tiny packet unopened into an envelope and seal it down—yet could not.

At last—it was towards midnight—she yielded to the force that compelled. Against her will she unfolded the shielding paper and held that which it contained upon the palm of her hand. Burning rubies, red as heart's blood, ardent as flame, flashed and glinted in the lamp-light. "OMNIA VINCIT AMOR"—how the words scorched her memory! And she had wondered once if they were true!

She knew now! She knew now! He had forced her to realise it. He had captured her, had kindled within her—by what magic she knew not—the undying Against her will, in spite of her utmost resistance, he had done this thing. Above and beyond and through her fiercest hatred, he had conquered her quivering heart. He had let her go again, but not till he had blasted her happiness for ever. None other could ever dominate her as this man dominated. None other could ever kindle in her—or ever quench—the torch that this man's hand had lighted.

And this was Love—this hunger that could never be satisfied, this craving which would not be stifled or ignored—Love triumphant, invincible, immortal—the thing she had striven to slay at its birth, but which had lived on in spite of her, growing, spreading, enveloping, till she was lost, till she was suffocated, in its immensity. There could never be any escape for her again. She was fettered hand and foot. It was useless any longer to strive. She stood and faced the truth.

She did not ask herself how it was she had ever come to care. She only numbly realised that she had always cared. And she knew now that to no woman is it given so to hate as she had hated without the spur of Love goading her thereto. Ah, but Love was cruel!

Love was merciless! For she had never known—nor ever could know now—the ecstasy of Love. Truly, it conquered; but it left its prisoners to perish of starvation in the wilderness.

A slight sound in the midnight silence! A timid hand softly trying the door-handle! She sprang up, dropping the ring upon her table, and turned to see Olga in her nightdress, standing in the doorway.

"I was awake," the child explained tremulously. "And I heard you moving. And I wondered, dear Muriel, if perhaps I could do anything to help you. You—you don't mind?"

Muriel opened her arms impulsively. She felt as if Olga had been sent to lighten her darkest hour.

For a while she held her close, not speaking at all; and it was Olga who at last broke the silence.

"Darling, are you crying for Captain Grange?"

She raised her head then to meet the child's gaze of tearful sympathy.

"I am not crying, dear," she said. "And—it wouldn't be for him if I were. I don't want to cry for him. I just envy him, that's all."

She leaned her head against Olga's shoulder, rocking a little to and fro with closed eyes. "Yes," she said at last, "you can help me, Olga, if you will. That ring on the table, dear,—a ring with rubies—do you see it?"

"Yes," breathed Olga, holding her very close.

"Then just take it, dear." Muriel's voice was unutterably weary; she seemed to speak with a great effort. "It belongs to Nick. He gave it to me once, long ago, in remembrance of something. I want you to give it back to him, and tell him simply that I prefer to forget."

Olga took up the ring. Her lips were trembling. "Aren't you—aren't you being nice to Nick any more, Muriel?" she asked in a whisper.

Muriel did not answer.

"Not when you promised?" the child urged piteously.

There was silence. Muriel's face was hidden. Her black hair hung about her like a cloud, veiling her from her friend's eyes. For a long time she said nothing whatever. Then at last without moving she made reply.

"It's no use, Olga. I can't! I can't! It's not my doing. It's his. Oh, I think my heart is broken!" Through the anguish of weeping that followed, Olga clasped her passionately close, frightened, by an intensity of suffering such as she had never seen before and was powerless to alleviate.

She slept with Muriel that night, but, waking in the dawning, just when Muriel had sunk to sleep, she crept out of bed and, with Nick's ring grasped tightly in her hand, softly stole away.



PART V



CHAPTER XLV

THE VISION

A gorgeous sunset lay in dusky, fading crimson upon the Plains, trailing to darkness in the east. The day had been hot and cloudless, but a faint, chill wind had sprung up with the passing of the sun, and it flitted hither and thither like a wandering spirit over the darkening earth.

Down in the native quarter a tom-tom throbbed, persistent, exasperating as the voice of conscience. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked restlessly, at irregular intervals. And at a point between tom-tom and dog a couple of parrots screeched vociferously.

Over all, the vast Indian night was rushing down on silent, mysterious wings. Crimson merged to grey in the telling, and through the falling dark there shone, detached and wonderful, a single star.

In the little wooden bungalow over against, the water-works a light had been kindled and gleamed out in a red streak across the Plain. Other lights were beginning to flicker also from all points of the compass, save only where a long strip of jungle lay like a blot upon the face of the earth. But the red light burned the steadiest of them all.

It came from the shaded lamp of an Englishman, and beneath it with stubborn, square-jawed determination the Englishman sat at work.

Very steadily his hand moved over the white paper, and the face that was bent above it never varied—a face that still possessed something of the freshness of youth though the set of the lips was firm even to sternness and the line of the chin was hard. He never raised his eyes as he worked except to refer to the notebook at his elbow. The passage of time seemed of no moment to him.

Yet at the soft opening of the door, he did look up for an instant, a gleam of expectancy upon his face that died immediately.

"All right, Sammy, directly," he said, returning without pause to his work.

Sammy, butler, bearer, and general factotum, irreproachable from his snowy turban to his white-slippered feet, did not take the hint to retire, but stood motionless just inside the room, waiting with statuesque patience till his master should deign to bestow upon him the favour of his full attention.

After a little Will Musgrave realised this, and with an abrupt sigh sat back in his chair and rubbed his hand across his forehead.

"Well?" he said then. "You needn't trouble to tell me that the mail has passed, for I heard the fellow half an hour ago. Of course there were no letters?"

The man shook his head despondingly. "No letters, sahib."

"Then what do you want?" asked Will, beginning to eye his work again.

Sammy—so dubbed by Daisy long ago because his own name was too sore a tax upon her memory—sent a look of gleaming entreaty across the lamp-lit space that separated him from his master.

"The dinner grows cold, sahib," he observed pathetically.

Will smiled a little. "All right, my good Sammy. What does it matter? I'm sure if I don't mind, you needn't. And I'm busy just now."

But the Indian stood his ground. "What will my mem-sahib say to me," he said, "when she comes and finds that my lord has been starved?"

Will's face changed. It was a very open face, boyishly sincere. He did not laugh at the earnest question. He only gravely shook his head.

"The mem-sahib will come," the man declared, with conviction. "And what will her servant say when she asks him why his master is so thin? She will say, 'Sammy, I left him in your care. What have you done to him?' And, sahib, what answer can her servant give?"

Will clasped his hands at the back of his head in a careless attitude, but his face was grim. "I don't think you need worry yourself, Sammy," he said. "I am not expecting the mem-sahib—at present."

Nevertheless, moved by the man's solicitude, he rose after a moment and laid his work together. He might as well dine, he reflected, as sit and argue about it. With a heavy step he passed into the room where dinner awaited him, and sat down at the table.

No, he was certainly not expecting her at present. He had even of late begun to ask himself if he expected her at all. It was five months now since the news of her severe illness had almost induced him to throw everything aside and go to her. He had only been deterred from this by a very serious letter from Dr. Jim, strongly advising him to remain where he was, since it was highly improbable that he would be allowed to see Daisy for weeks or even months were he at hand, and she would most certainly be in no fit state to return with him to India. That letter had been to Will as the passing knell of all he had ever hoped or desired. Definitely it had told him very little, but he was not lacking in perception, and he had read a distinct and wholly unmistakable meaning behind the guarded, kindly sentences. And he knew when he laid the letter down that in Dr. Jim's opinion his presence might do incalculable harm. From that day forward he had entertained no further idea of return, settling down again to his work with a dogged patience that was very nearly allied to despair.

He was undoubtedly a rising man. There were prospects of a speedy improvement in his position. It was unlikely that he would be called upon to spend another hot season in the scorching Plains. Steady perseverance and indubitable talent had made their mark. But success was dust and ashes to him now. He did not greatly care if he went or stayed.

That Daisy was well again, or on the high-road to recovery, he knew; but he had not received a single letter from her since her illness.

Jim's epistles were very few and far between, but Nick had maintained a fairly regular correspondence with him till a few weeks back when it had unaccountably lapsed. But then Nick had done unaccountable things before, and he did not set down his silence to inconstancy. He was probably making prodigious efforts on his behalf, and Will awaited every mail with an eagerness he could not quite suppress, which turned invariably, however, into a sick sense of disappointment.

That Daisy would ever return to him now he did not for an instant believe, but there remained the chance—the slender, infinitesimal chance—that she might ask him to go to her. More than a flying visit she would know he could not manage. His work was his living, and hers. But so much Nick's powers of persuasion might one day accomplish though he would not allow himself to contemplate the possibility, while week by week the chance dwindled.

So he sat alone and unexpectant at his dinner-table that night and made heroic efforts to pacify the vigilant Sammy whose protest had warmed his heart a little if it had not greatly assisted his appetite.

He was glad when the meal was over, and he could saunter out on to the verandah with his cigar. The night was splendid with stars; but it held no moon. The wind had died away, but it had left a certain chill behind; and somehow he was reminded of a certain evening of early summer in England long ago, when he and Daisy had strolled together in an English garden, and she had yielded impulsively to his earnest wooing and had promised to be his wife. He remembered still the little laugh half sweet, half bitter, with which she had surrendered, the soft raillery of her blue eyes that yet had not wholly mocked him, the dainty charm of her submission. She had not loved him. He had known it even then. She had almost told him so. But with a boy's impetuosity he had taken the little she had to give, trusting to the future to make her all his own.

Ah, well! He caught himself sighing, and found that his cigar was out. With something less than his customary self-suppression he pitched it forth into the darkness. He could not even smoke with any enjoyment. He would go indoors and work.

He swung round on his heel, and started back along the verandah towards his room from which the red light streamed. Three strides he took with his eyes upon the ground. Then for no reason that he knew he glanced up towards that bar of light. The next instant he stood still as one transfixed, and all the blood rushed in tumult to his heart.

There, motionless in the full glare—watching him, waiting for him—stood his wife!



CHAPTER XLVI

THE HEART OF A MAN

She did not utter a single word or move to greet him. Even in that ruddy light she was white to the lips. Her hands were fast gripped together. She did not seem to breathe.

So for full thirty seconds they faced one another, speechless, spell-bound, while through the awful silence the cry of a jackal sounded from afar, seeking its meat from God.

Will was the first to move, feeling for his handkerchief mechanically and wiping his forehead. Also he tried to speak aloud, but his voice was gone. "Pull yourself together, you fool!" he whispered savagely. "She'll be gone again directly."

She caught the words apparently, for her attitude changed. She parted her straining hands as though by great effort, and moved towards him.

Out of the glare of the lamplight she looked more normal. She wore a grey travelling-dress, but her hat was off. He fancied he saw the sparkle of the starlight in her hair.

She came towards him a few steps, and then she stopped. "Will," she said, and her voice had a piteous tremble in it, "won't you speak to me? Don't you—don't you know me?"

Her voice awoke him, brought him down from the soaring heights of imagination as it were with a thud. He strode forward and caught her hands in his.

"Good heavens, Daisy!" he said. "I thought I was dreaming! How on earth—"

And there he stopped dead, checked in mid career, for she was leaning back from him, leaning back with all her strength that he might not kiss her.

He stood, still holding her hands, and looked at her. There was a curious, choked sensation at his throat, as if he had swallowed ashes. She had come back to him—she had come back to him indeed, but he had a feeling that she was somehow beyond his reach, further away from him in that moment of incredible reunion than she had ever been during all the weary months of their separation. This woman with the pale face and tragic eyes was a total stranger to him. Small wonder that he had thought himself to be dreaming!

With a furious effort he collected himself. He let her hands slip from his. "Come in here," he said, forcing his dry throat to speech by sheer strength of will. "You should have let me know."

She went in without a word, and came to a stand before the table that was littered with his work. She was agitated, he saw. Her hand was pressed against her heart, and she seemed to breathe with difficulty.

Instinctively he came to her aid with commonplace phrases—the first that occurred to him. "How did you come? But no matter! Tell me presently. You must have something to eat. You look dead beat. Sit down, won't—"

And there he stopped again, breaking off short to stare at her. In the lighted room she had turned to face him, and he saw that her hair was no longer golden but silvery white.

Seeing his look, she began to speak in hurried, uneven sentences. "I have been ill, you know. It—it was brain fever, Jim said. Hair—fair hair particularly—does go like that sometimes."

"You are well again?" he questioned.

"Oh, quite—quite." There was something almost feverish in the assertion; she was facing him with desperate resolution. "I have been well for a long time. Please don't send for anything. I dined at the dak-bungalow an hour ago. I—I thought it best."

Her agitation was increasing. She panted between each sentence. Will turned aside, shut and bolted the window, and drew the blind. Then he went close to her; he laid a steady hand upon her.

"Sit down," he said, "and tell me what is the matter."

She sank down mutely. Her mouth was quivering; she sought to hide it from him with her hand.

"Tell me," he said again, and quietly though he spoke there was in his tone a certain mastery that had never asserted itself in the old days; "What is it? Why have you come to me like this?"

"I—haven't come to stay, Will," she said, her voice so low that it was barely audible.

His face changed. He looked suddenly dogged. "After twenty months!" he said.

She bent her head. "I know. It's half a lifetime—more. You have learnt to do without me by this. At least—I hope you have—for your own sake."

He made no comment on the words; perhaps he did not hear them. After a brief silence she heard his voice above her bowed head. "Something is wrong. You'll tell me presently, won't you? But—really you needn't be afraid."

Something in the words—was it a hint of tenderness?—renewed her failing strength. She commanded herself and raised her head. She scarcely recognised in the steady, square-chinned man before her the impulsive, round-faced boy she had left. There was something unfathomable about him, a hint of greatness that affected her strangely.

"Yes," she said. "Something is wrong. It is what I am here for—what I have come to tell you. And when it is over, I'm going away—I'm going away—out of your life—for ever, this time."

His jaw hardened, but he said nothing whatever. He stood waiting for her to continue.

She rose slowly to her feet though she was scarcely capable of standing. She had come to the last ounce of her strength, but she spent it bravely.

"Will," she said, and though her voice shook uncontrollably every word was clear, "I hardly know how to say it. You have always trusted me, always been true to me. I think—once—you almost worshipped me. But you'll never worship me any more, because—because—I am unworthy of you. Do you understand? I was held back from the final wickedness, or—or I shouldn't be here now. But the sin was there in my heart. Heaven help me, it is there still. There! I have told you. It—was your right. I don't ask for mercy or forgiveness. Only punish me—punish me—and then—let me—go!"

Voice and strength failed together. Her limbs doubled under her, and she sank suddenly down at his feet, sobbing—terrible, painful, tearless sobs that seemed to rend her very being.

Without a word he stooped and lifted her. He was white to the lips, but there was no hesitancy about him. He acted instantly and decidedly as a man quite sure of himself.

He carried her to the old charpoy by the window and laid her down.

Many minutes later, when her anguish had a little spent itself, she realised that he was kneeling beside her, holding her pressed against his heart. Through all the bitter chaos of her misery and her shame there came to her the touch of his hand upon her head.

It amazed her—it thrilled her, that touch of his; in a fashion it awed her. She kept her face hidden from him; she could not look up. But he did not seek to see her face. He only kept his hand upon her throbbing temple till she grew still against his breast.

Then at length, his voice slow and deep and very steady, he spoke. "Daisy, we will never speak of this again."

She gave a great start. Pity, even a certain measure of kindness, she had almost begun to expect; but not this—not this! She made a movement to draw herself away from him, but he would not suffer it. He only held her closer.

"Oh, don't, Will, don't!" she implored him brokenly. "For your own sake—let me go!"

"For my own sake, Daisy," he answered quietly,—"and for yours, since you have come to me, I will never let you go again."

"But you can't want me," she insisted piteously. "Don't be generous, Will. I can't bear it. Anything but that! I would rather you cursed me—indeed—indeed!"

His hand restrained her, silenced her. "Hush!" he said. "You are my wife. I love you, and I want you."

Tears came to her then with a rush, blinding, burning, overwhelming, and yet their very agony was relief to her. She made no further effort to loosen his hold. She even feebly clung to him as one needing support.

"Ah, but I must tell you—I must tell you," she whispered at last. "If—if you mean to forgive me, you must know—everything."

"Tell me, if it helps you," he answered, and he spoke with the splendid patience that twenty weary months had wrought in him. "Only believe—before you begin—that I have forgiven you. For—before God—it is the truth."

And so presently, lying in his arms, her face hidden low on his breast, she told him all, suppressing nothing, extenuating nothing, simply pouring out the whole bitter story, sometimes halting, sometimes incoherent, but never wavering in her purpose, till, like an evil growth that yet clung about her palpitating heart, her sin lay bare before him—the sin of a woman who had almost forgotten that Love is a holy thing.

He heard her to the end with scarcely a word, and when she had finished he made one comment only.

"And so you gave him up."

She shivered with the pain of that memory. "Yes, I gave him up—I gave him up. Nick had made me see the hopelessness of it all—the wickedness. And he—he let me go. He saw it too—at least he understood. And on that very night—oh, Will, that awful night—he went to his death."

His arms grew closer about her. "My poor girl!" he said.

"Ah, but you shouldn't!" she sobbed. "You shouldn't! You ought to hate me—to despise me."

"Hush!" he said again. And she knew that with that one word he resolutely turned his back upon the gulf that had opened between them during those twenty months—that gulf that his love had been great enough to bridge—and that he took her with him, bruised and broken and storm-tossed as she was, into a very sheltered place.

When presently he turned her face up to his own and gravely kissed her she clung to his neck like a tired child, no longer fearing to meet his look, only thankful for the comfort of his arms.

For a while longer he held her silently, then very quietly he began to question her about her journey. Had she told him that she had been putting up at the dak-bungalow?

"Oh, only for a few hours," she answered. "We arrived this evening, Nick and I."

"Nick!" he said. "And you left him behind?"

"He is waiting to take me back," she murmured, her face hidden against his shoulder.

Again, very tenderly, his hand pressed her forehead. "He must come to us, eh, dear? I will sent the khit down with a note presently. But you are tired out, and must rest. Lie here while I go and tell Sammy to make ready."

It was when he came back to her that she began to see wherein lay the change in him that had so struck her.

From her cushions she looked up at him, piteously smiling. "How thin you are, Will! And you are getting quite a scholarly stoop."

"Ah, that's India," he said.

But she knew that it was not India at all, and her face told him so, though he affected not to see it.

He bent over her. "Now, Daisy, I am going to carry you to bed as I used—do you remember?—at Simla, after the baby came. Dear little chap! Do you remember how he used to smile in his sleep?"

His voice was hushed, as though he stood once more beside the tiny cot.

She sat up, yielding herself to his arms. "Oh, Will," she said, with a great sob, "if only he had lived!"

He held her closely, and lying against his breast she felt the sigh he stifled. His lips were upon the silvered hair.

"Perhaps—some day—Daisy," he said, under his breath.

And she, clinging to him, whispered back through her tears, "Oh, Will,—I do hope so."



CHAPTER XLVII

IN THE NAME OF FRIENDSHIP

It was very hot down on the buzzing race-course, almost intolerably so in the opinion of the girl who sat in Lady Bassett's elegantly-appointed carriage, and looked out with the indifference of boredom upon the sweltering crowds.

"Dear child, don't look so freezingly aloof!" she had been entreated more than once; and each time the soft injunction had reached her the wide dark eyes had taken to themselves a more utter disdain.

If she looked freezing, she was far from feeling it, for the hot weather was at its height, and Ghawalkhand, though healthy, was not the coolest spot in the Indian Empire. Sir Reginald Bassett had been appointed British Resident, to act as adviser to the young rajah thereof, and there had been no question of a flitting to Simla that year. Lady Bassett had deplored this, but Muriel rejoiced. She never wanted to see Simla again.

Life was a horrible emptiness to her in those days. She was weary beyond expression, and had no heart for the gaieties in which she was plunged. Idle compliments had never attracted her, and flirtations were an abomination to her. She looked through and beyond them with the eyes of a sphinx. But there were very few who suspected the intolerable ache that throbbed unceasingly behind her impassivity—the loneliness of spirit that oppressed her like a crushing, physical weight.

Even Bobby Fraser, who saw most things, could scarcely have been aware of this; yet certainly it was not the vivacity of her conversation that induced him to seek her out as he generally did when he saw her sitting apart. A very cheery bachelor was Bobby Fraser, and a tremendous favourite wherever he went. He was a wonderful organizer, and he invariably had a hand in anything of an entertaining nature that was going forward.

He had just brought her tea, and was waiting beside her while she drank it. Lady Bassett had left the carriage for the paddock, and Muriel sat alone.

Had she had anything on the last race, he wanted to know? Muriel had not. He had, and was practically ruined in consequence—a calamity which in no way seemed to affect his spirits.

"Who would have expected a rank outsider like that to walk over the course? Ought to have been disqualified for sheer cheek. Reminds me of a chap I once knew—forget his name—Nick something or other—who entered at the last minute for the Great Mogul's Cup at Sharapura. Did it for a bet, they said. It's years ago now. The horse was a perfect brute—all bone and no flesh—with a temper like the foul fiend and no points whatever—looked a regular crock at starting. But he romped home on three legs, notwithstanding, with his jockey clinging to him like an inspired monkey. It was the only race he ever won. Every one put it down to black magic or personal magnetism on the part of his rider. Same thing, I believe. He was the sort of chap who always comes out on top. Rum thing I can't remember his name. I had travelled out with him on the same boat once too. Have some more tea."

This was a specimen of most of Bobby Fraser's conversation. He was brimful of anecdotes. They flowed as easily as water from a fountain. Their source seemed inexhaustible. He never repeated himself to the same person.

Muriel declined his offer of more tea. For some reason she wanted to hear more of the man who had won the Great Mogul's Cup at Sharapura.

Bobby was more than willing to oblige. "Oh, it was sheer cheek that carried him through, of course. I always said he was the cheekiest beggar under the sun—quite a little chap he was, hideously ugly, with a face like a baked apple, and eyes that made you think of a cinematograph. You know the sort of thing. I used to think he had a future before him, but he seems to have dropped out. He was only about twenty when I had him for a stable-companion. I remember one outrageous thing he did on the voyage out. There was card-playing going on in the saloon one night, and he was looking on. One of the lady-players—well, I suppose I may as well call it by its name—one of them cheated. He detected it. Beastly position, of course. Don't know what I should have done under the circumstances, but anyhow he wasn't at a loss. He simply lighted a cigarette and set fire to the lady's dress."

Muriel's exclamation of horror was ample testimony to the fact that her keenest interest was aroused.

"Yes, awfully risky, wasn't it?" said Bobby. "We only thought at the time he had been abominably careless. I did not hear the rights of the case till afterwards, and then not from him. There was a fine flareup, of course—card-table overturned—ladies in hysterics—in the middle of the fray our gallant hero extinguishing the flames with his bare hands. He was profusely apologetic and rather badly scorched. The lady took very little harm, except to her nerves and her temper. She cut him dead for the rest of the voyage, but I don't think it depressed him much. He was the sort of fellow that never gets depressed. Hullo! There's Mrs. Philpot making violent signs. I suppose I had better go and see what she wants, or be dropped for evermore. Good-bye!"

He smiled upon her and departed, leaving her thoughtful, with a certain wistful wonder in her eyes.

Lady Bassett's return interrupted her reverie. "You have had some tea, I hope, dear? Ah, I thought Mr. Bobby Fraser was making his way in this direction. So sweet of him not to forget you when he has so many other calls upon his attention. And how are you faring for to-night? Is your programme full yet? I have literally not one dance left."

Lady Bassett had deemed it advisable to ignore the fact of Muriel's brief engagement to Captain Grange since the girl's return to India. She knew, as did her husband, that it had come to an end before Grange's death, but she withheld all comment upon it. Her one desire was to get the dear child married without delay, and she was not backward in letting her know it. Life at Ghawalkhand was one continuous round of gaiety, and she had every opportunity for forwarding her scheme. Though she deplored Muriel's unresponsiveness, she yet did not despair. It was sheer affectation on the girl's part, she would tell herself, and would soon pass. And after all, that queenly, aloof air had a charm that was all its own. It might not attract the many, but she had begun to fancy of late that Bobby Fraser had felt its influence. He was not in the least the sort of man she would have expected to do so, but there was no accounting for taste—masculine taste especially. And it would be an excellent thing for Muriel.

She was therefore being particularly gracious to her young charge just then—a state of affairs which Muriel endured rather than appreciated. She would never feel at her ease with Lady Bassett as long as she lived.

She was glad when they drove away at length, for she wanted to be alone. Those anecdotes of Bobby's had affected her strangely. She had felt so completely cut off of late from all things connected with the past. No one ever mentioned Nick to her now—not even her faithful correspondent Olga. Meteor-like, he had flashed through her sky and disappeared; leaving a burning, ineradicable trail behind him, it is true, but none the less was he gone. She had not the faintest idea where he was. She would have given all she had to know, yet could not bring herself to ask. It seemed highly improbable that he would ever cross her path again, and she knew she ought to be glad of this; yet no gladness ever warmed her heart. And now here was a man who had known him, who had told her of exploits new to her knowledge yet how strangely familiar to her understanding, who had at a touch brought before her the weird personality that her imagination sometimes strove in vain to summon. She could have sat and listened to Bobby's reminiscences for hours. The bare mention of Nick's name had made her blood run faster.

Lady Bassett did not trouble her to converse during the drive back, ascribing to her evident desire for silence a reason which Muriel was too absent to suspect. But when the girl roused herself to throw a couple of annas to an old beggar who was crouched against the entrance to the Residency grounds she could not resist giving utterance to a gentle expostulation.

"I wish you would not encourage these people, dearest. They are so extremely undesirable, and there is so much unrest in the State just now that I cannot but regard them with anxiety."

Muriel murmured an apology, with the inward reservation to bestow her alms next time when Lady Bassett was not looking on.

She found a letter lying on her table when she entered her room, and took it up listlessly, without much interest. Her mind was still running on those two anecdotes with which Bobby Fraser had so successfully enlivened her boredom. The writing on the envelope was vaguely familiar to her, but she did not associate it with anything of importance. Absently she opened it, half reluctant to recall her wandering thoughts. It came from a Hill station in Bengal, but that told her nothing. She turned to the signature.

The next instant she had turned back again to the beginning, and was reading eagerly. Her correspondent was Will Musgrave.

"Dear Miss Roscoe,"—ran the letter. "After long consideration I have decided to write and beg of you a favour which I fancy you will grant more readily than I venture to ask. My wife, as you probably know, joined me some months ago. She is in very indifferent health, and has expressed a most earnest wish to see you. I believe there is something which she wishes to tell you—something that weighs upon her heavily; and though I trust that all will go well with her, I cannot help feeling that she would stand a much better chance of this if only her mind could be set at rest. I know I am asking a big thing of you, for the journey is a ghastly one at this time of the year, but if of your goodness you can bring yourself to face it, I will myself meet you and escort you across the Plains. Will you think the matter carefully over? And perhaps you would wire a reply.

"I have written without Daisy's knowledge, as she seems to feel that she has forfeited the right to your friendship.—Sincerely yours,

"W. MUSGRAVE."

Muriel's reply was despatched that evening, almost before she had fully read the appeal.

"Starting to-morrow," was all she said.



CHAPTER XLVIII

THE HEALING OF THE BREACH

Lady Bassett considered the decision deplorably headlong, and said so; but her remonstrances were of no avail. Muriel tossed aside her listlessness as resolutely as the ball-dress that had been laid out for the evening's festivity, and plunged at once into preparations for her journey. She knew full well that it was of no actual importance to Lady Bassett whether she went or stayed, and she did not pretend to think otherwise. Moreover, no power on earth would have kept her away from Daisy now that she knew herself to be wanted.

Though more than half of the three days' journey lay across the sweltering Plains, she contemplated it without anxiety, even with rejoicing. At last, the breach, over which she had secretly mourned so deeply, was to be healed.

The next morning at an early hour she was upon her way. She looked out as she drove through the gates for the old native beggar who had crouched at the entrance on the previous afternoon. He was not there, but a little way further she met him hobbling along to take up his post for the day. From the folds of his chuddah his unkempt beard wagged entreaty at the carriage as it passed. Impulsively, because of the gladness that was so new to her lonely heart, she leaned from the window and threw him a rupee.

Looking back upon the journey later, she never remembered its tedium. She was as one borne on the wings of love, and she scarcely noticed the hardships of the way.

Will Musgrave met her according to his promise at the great junction in the Plains. She found him exceedingly solicitous for her welfare, but so grave and silent that she hardly liked to question him. He thanked her very earnestly for coming, said that Daisy was about the same, and then left her almost exclusively to the society of her ayah.

The heat in the Plains was terrific, but Muriel's courage never wavered. She endured it with unfaltering resolution, hour after hour reckoning the dwindling miles that lay before them, passing over all personal discomfort as of no account, content only to be going forward.

But they left the Plains behind at last, and then came to the welcome ascent to the Hill station through a country where pine-trees grew ever more and more abundant.

At length at the close of a splendid day they reached it, and as they were nearing their destination Will broke through his silence.

"She doesn't know even yet that you are coming," he said. "I thought the suspense of waiting for you might be bad for her. Miss Roscoe—in heaven's name—make her happy if you can!"

There was such a passion of entreaty in his voice that Muriel was deeply touched. She gave him her hand impulsively.

"Mr. Musgrave," she said, "to this day I do not know what it was that came between us, but I promise—I promise—that if any effort of mine can remove it, it shall be removed to-night."

Will Musgrave squeezed her fingers hard. "God bless you!" he said earnestly.

And with that he left her, and went on ahead to prepare Daisy for her coming.

All her life Muriel remembered Daisy's welcome of that evening with a thrill of pain. They met at the gate of the little compound that surrounded the bungalow Will had taken for his wife, and though the light of the sinking sun smote with a certain ruddiness upon Daisy, Muriel was unspeakably shocked by her appearance.

Her white hair, her deathly pallor, the haunting misery of her eyes—above all, her silence—went straight to the girl's heart. Without a single word she gathered Daisy close in her warm young arms and so held her in a long and speechless embrace.

After all, it was Daisy who spoke first, gently drawing herself away. "Come in, darling! You must be nearly dead after your awful journey. I can't think how Will could ask it of you at this time of the year. I couldn't myself."

"I would have come to you from the world's end—and gladly," Muriel answered, in her deep voice. "You know I would."

And that was all that passed between them, for Will was present, and Daisy had already begun to lead her guest into the house.

As the evening wore on, Muriel was more and more struck by the great change she saw in her. They had not met for ten months, but twice as many years seemed to have passed over Daisy, crushing her beneath their weight. All her old sprightliness had vanished utterly. She spoke but little, and there was in her manner to her husband a wistful humility, a submission so absolute, that Muriel, remembering her ancient spirit, could have wept.

Will looked at her as if he longed to say something when she bade him good-night, but Daisy was beside her, and he could only give her a tremendous handgrip.

They went away together, and Daisy accompanied her to her room. But the wall of reserve that had been built up between them was not to be shattered at a touch. Neither of them knew exactly how to approach it. There was no awkwardness between them, there was no lack of tenderness, but the door that had closed so long ago was hard to open. Daisy seemed to avoid it with a morbid dread, and it was not in Muriel's power to make the first move.

So for awhile they lingered together, talking commonplaces, and at length parted for the night, holding each other closely, without words.

It seemed evident that Daisy could not bring herself to speak at present, and Muriel went to bed with a heavy heart.

She was far too weary to lie awake, but her tired brain would not rest. For the first time in many dreary months she dreamed of Nick.

He was jeering at her in devilish jubilation because she had changed her mind about marrying him, but lacked the courage to tell him so.



CHAPTER XLIX

THE LOWERING OF THE FLAG

The night was very far advanced when Muriel was aroused from her dreams by a sound which she drowsily fancied must have been going on for some time. It did not disturb her very seriously at first; she even subconsciously made an effort to ignore it. But at length a sudden stab of understanding pierced her sleep-laden senses, and in a moment she started up broad awake. Some one was in the room with her. Through the dumb stillness before the dawn there came the sound of bitter weeping.

For a few seconds she sat motionless, startled, bewildered, half afraid. The room was in nearly total darkness. Only in dimmest outline could she discern the long French window that opened upon the verandah.

The weeping continued. It was half smothered, but it sounded agonised. A great wave of compassion swept suddenly over Muriel. All in a moment she understood.

Swiftly she leaned forward into the darkness, feeling outwards till her groping hands touched a figure that crouched beside the bed.

"Daisy! Daisy, my darling!" she said, and there was anguish in her own voice. "What is it?"

In a second the sobbing ceased as if some magic had silenced it. Two hands reached up out of the darkness and tightly clasped hers. A broken voice whispered her name.

"What is it?" Muriel repeated in growing distress.

"Hush, dear, hush!" the trembling voice implored. "Don't let Will hear! It worries him so."

"But, my darling,—" Muriel protested.

She began to feel for some matches, but again the nervous hands caught and imprisoned hers.

"Don't—please!" Daisy begged her earnestly. "I—I have something to tell you—something that will shock you unutterably. And I—I don't want you to see my face."

She resisted Muriel's attempt to put her arms about her. "No—no, dear! Hear me first. There! Let me kneel beside you. It will not take me long. It isn't just for my own sake I am going to speak, nor yet—entirely—for yours. You will see presently. Don't ask me anything—please—till I have done. And then if—if there is anything you want to know, I will try to tell you."

"Come and lie beside me," Muriel urged.

But Daisy would not. She had sunk very low beside the bed. For a while she crouched there in silence while she summoned her strength.

Then, "Oh, Muriel," she suddenly said, and the words seemed to burst from her with a great sigh, "I wonder if you ever really loved Blake."

"No, dear, I never did." Muriel's answer came quiet and sincere through the darkness. "Nor did he love me. Our engagement was a mistake. I was going to tell him so—if things had been different."

"I never thought you cared for him," Daisy said. "But oh, Muriel, I did. I loved him with my whole soul. No, don't start! It is over now—at least that part of it that was sinful. I only tell you of it because it is the key to everything that must have puzzled you so horribly all this time. We always loved each other from the very beginning, but our people wouldn't hear of it because we were cousins. And so we separated and I used to think that I had put it away from me. But—last summer—it all came back. You mustn't blame him, Muriel. Blame me—blame me!" The thin hands tightened convulsively. "It was when my baby died that I began to give way. We never meant it—either of us—but we didn't fight hard enough. And then at last—at Brethaven—Nick found it out; and it was because he knew that Blake's heart was not in his compact with you that he made him write to you and break it off. It was not for his own ends at all that he did it. It was for your sake alone. He even swore to Blake that if he would put an end to his engagement, he on his part would give up all idea of winning you and would never trouble you any more. And that was the finest thing he ever did, Muriel, for he never loved any one but you. Surely you know it. You must know it by this time. You have never understood him, but you must have begun to realise that he has loved you well enough to set your happiness and well-being always far, far before his own."

Daisy paused. Her weeping had wholly ceased, but she was shivering from head to foot.

Muriel sat in silence above her, watching wide-eyed, unseeing, the vague hint of light at the open window. She was beginning to understand many things—ah, many things—that had been as a sealed book to her till then.

After a time Daisy went on. "No one will ever know what Nick was to me at that time, how he showed me the wickedness of it all, how he held me back from taking the final step, making me realise—even against my will—that Love—true Love—is holy, conquering all evil. And afterwards—afterwards—when Blake was gone—he stood by me and helped me to live, and brought me back at last to my husband. I could never have done it alone. I hadn't the strength. You see"—the low voice faltered suddenly—"I never expected Will to forgive me. I never asked it of him—any more than I am asking it of you."

"Oh, my darling, there is no need!" Muriel turned suddenly to throw impetuous arms about the huddled figure at her side. "Daisy! Daisy! I love you. Let us forget there has ever been this thing between us. Let us be as we used to be, and never drift apart again."

Tenderly but insistently, she lifted Daisy to the bed beside her, holding her fast. The wall between them was broken down at last. They clung together as sisters long parted.

Daisy, spent by the violence of her emotion, lay for a long time in Muriel's arms without attempting anything further. But at length with a palpable effort she began to speak of other things.

"You know, I have a feeling—perhaps it is morbid—that I am not going to live. I am sure Will thinks so too. If I die, Muriel,—three months from now—you and Nick must help him all you can."

"You are not going to die," Muriel asserted vehemently. "You are not to talk of dying, or think of it. Oh, Daisy, can't you look forward to the better time that is coming—when you will have something to live for? And won't you try to think more of Will? It would break his heart to lose you."

"I do think of him," Daisy said wearily. "I would do anything to make him happier. But I can't look forward. I am so tired—so tired."

"You will feel differently by-and-by," Muriel whispered.

"Perhaps," she assented. "I don't know. I don't feel as if I shall ever hold another child in my arms. God knows I don't deserve it."

"Do you think He looks at it in that way?" murmured Muriel, her arms tightening. "There wouldn't be much in life for any of us if He did."

"I don't know," Daisy said again.

She lay quiet for a little as though pondering something. Then at length hesitatingly she spoke. "Muriel, there is one thing that whether I live or whether I die I want with my whole heart. May I tell you what it is?"

"Of course, dear. What is it?"

Daisy turned in her arms, holding her in a clasp that was passionate. "My darling," she whispered very earnestly, "I would give all I have in the world to know you happy with—with the man you love."

Silence followed the words. Muriel had become suddenly quite still; her head was bent.

"Don't—don't bar me out of your confidence," Daisy implored her tremulously. "There is so little left for me to do now. Muriel—dearest—you do love him?"

Muriel moved impulsively, hiding her face in her friend's neck. But she said no word in answer.

Daisy went on softly, as though she had spoken. "He is still waiting for you. I think he will wait all his life, though he will never come to you again unless you call him. Won't you—can't you—send him just one little word?"

"How can I?" The words broke suddenly from Muriel as though she could no longer restrain them. "How can I possibly?"

"It could be done," Daisy said. "I know he is still somewhere in India though he has left the Army. We could get a message to him at any time."

"Oh, but I couldn't—I couldn't!" Muriel had begun to tremble violently. There was a sound of tears in her deep voice. "Besides—he wouldn't come."

"My dear, he would," Daisy assured her. "He would come to you directly if he only knew that you wanted him. Muriel, surely you are not—not too proud to let him know!"

"Proud! Oh, no, no!" There was almost a moan in the words. Muriel's head sank a little lower. "Heaven knows I'm not proud," she said. "I am ashamed—miserably ashamed. I have trampled on his love so often—so often. How could I ask him for it—now?"

"Ah, but if he came to you," Daisy persisted, "if in spite of all he came to you, you wouldn't send him away?"

"Send him away!" A sudden note of passion thrilled in Muriel's voice. She lifted her head sharply. With the tears upon her cheeks she yet spoke with a certain exultation. "I—I would follow him barefoot across the world," she said, "if—if he would only lift one finger to call me. But oh, Daisy,"—her confidence vanished at a breath—"where's the use of talking? He never, never will."

"He will if you let him know," Daisy answered with conviction. "Don't you think you can, dear? Give me just one word for him—one tiny message that he will understand. Only trust him this once—just this once! Give him his opportunity—he has never had one before, poor boy—and I know, I know, he will not throw it away."

"You don't think he will—laugh?" Muriel whispered.

"My dear child, no! Nick doesn't laugh at sacred things."

Muriel's face was burning in the darkness. She covered it with her hands as though it could be seen.

For a few seconds she sat very still. Then slowly but steadily she spoke.

"Tell him then, Daisy, from me, that 'Love conquers all things—and we must yield to Love.'"



CHAPTER L

EREBUS

Not another word passed between Daisy and Muriel upon the subject of that night's confidences. There seemed nothing further to be said. Moreover, there was between them a closer understanding than words could compass.

The days that followed passed very peacefully, and Daisy began to improve so marvellously in health and spirits that both her husband and her guest caught at times fleeting glimpses of the old light-hearted personality that they had loved in earlier days.

"You have done wonders for my wife," Will said one day to Muriel. And though she disclaimed all credit, she could not fail to see a very marked improvement.

She herself was feeling unaccountably happy in those days, as though somewhere deep down in her heart a bird had begun to sing. Again and again she told herself that she had no cause for gladness; but again and yet again that sweet, elusive music filled her soul.

She would have gladly stayed on with Daisy, seeing how the latter clung to her, for an indefinite period; but this was not to be.

Daisy came out on to the verandah one morning with a letter in her hand.

"My dear," she said, "I regret to say that, I must part with you. I have had a most touching epistle from Lady Bassett, describing at length your many wasted opportunities, and urging me to return you to the fold with all speed. It seems there is to be a State Ball at the palace—an immense affair to which the Rajah is inviting all the big guns for miles around—and Lady Bassett thinks that her dear child ought not to miss such a gorgeous occasion. She seems to think that something of importance depends upon it, and hints that I should be almost criminally selfish to deprive you of such a treat as this will be."

Muriel lifted a flushed face from a letter of her own. "I have heard from Sir Reginald," she said. "Evidently she has made him write. I can't think why, for she never wants me when I am with her. I don't see why I should go, do you? After all, I am of age and independent."

A very tender smile touched Daisy's lips. "I think you had better go, darling," she said.

Muriel opened her eyes wide. "But why—"

Daisy checked the question half uttered. "I think it will be better for you. I never meant to let you stay till the rains, so it makes little more than a week's difference. It sounds as if I want to be rid of you, doesn't it? But you know it isn't that. I shall miss you horribly, but you have done what you came to do, and I shall get on all right now. So I am not going to keep you with me any longer. My reasons are not Lady Bassett's reasons, but all the same it would be selfish of me to let you stay. Later on perhaps—in the winter—you will come and make a long stay; spend Christmas with us, and we will have some real fun, shall we, Will?" turning to her husband who had just appeared.

He stared for an instant as if he thought he had not heard aright, and there was to Muriel something infinitely pathetic in the way his brown hand touched his wife's shoulder as he passed her and made reply.

"Oh, rather!" he said. "We'll have a regular jollification with as many old friends as we can collect. Don't forget, Miss Roscoe! You are booked first and foremost, and we shall keep you to it, Daisy and I."

Two days later Muriel was on her way back to Ghawalkhand. She found the heat of the journey almost insupportable. The Plains lay under a burning pall of cloud, and at night the rolling thunder was incessant. But no rain fell to ease the smothering oppression of the atmosphere.

She almost fainted one evening, but Will was with her and she never forgot his kindly ministrations.

A few hours' journey from Ghawalkhand Sir Reginald himself met her, and here she parted with Will with renewed promises of a future meeting towards the end of the year.

Sir Reginald fussed over her kind-heartedly, hoped she had enjoyed herself, thought she looked very thin, and declared that his wife was looking forward with much pleasure to her return. The State was still somewhat unsettled, there had been one or two outrages of late, nothing serious, of course, but the native element was restless, and he fancied Lady Bassett was nervous.

She was away at a polo-match when they arrived, and Muriel profited by her absence and went straight to bed.

She could have slept for hours had she been permitted to do so, but Lady Bassett, returning, awoke her to receive her welcome. She was charmed to have her back, she declared, though shocked to see her looking so wan, "so almost plain, dear child, if one may take the liberty of an old friend to tell you so."

Neither the crooked smile that accompanied this gentle criticism nor the decidedly grim laugh with which it was received, was of a particularly friendly nature; but these facts were not extraordinary. There had never been the smallest hint of sympathy between them.

"I trust you will be looking much better than this two nights hence," Lady Bassett proceeded in her soft accents. "The Rajah's ball is to be very magnificent, quite dazzlingly so from all accounts. Mr. Bobby Fraser is of course behind the scenes, and he tells me that the preparations in progress are simply gigantic. By the way, dear, it is to be hoped that your absence has not damaged your prospects in that quarter. I have been afraid lately that he was transferring his allegiance to the second Egerton girl. I hope earnestly that there is nothing in it, for you know how I have your happiness at heart, do you not? And it would be such an excellent thing for you, dear child, as I expect you realise. For you know, you look so much older than you actually are that you really ought not to throw away any more opportunities. Every girl thinks she must have her fling, but you, dear, should soberly think of getting settled soon. You would not like to get left, I feel sure."

At this point Muriel sat up suddenly, her dark eyes very bright, and in brief tones announced that so far as she was concerned the second Egerton girl was more than welcome to Mr. Fraser and she hoped, if she wanted him, she would manage to keep him.

It was crudely expressed, as Lady Bassett pointed out with a sigh for her waywardness; but Muriel always was crude when her deeper feelings were disturbed, and physical fatigue had made her irritable.

She wished ardently that Lady Bassett would leave her, but Lady Bassett had not quite done. She lingered to ask for news of poor little Daisy Musgrave. Had she yet fully recovered from the shock of her cousin's tragic death? Could she bear to speak of him? She, Lady Bassett, had always suspected the existence of an unfortunate attachment between them.

Muriel had no information to bestow upon the subject. She hoped and believed that Daisy was getting stronger, and had promised, all being well, to spend Christmas with her.

Lady Bassett shook her head over this declaration. The dear child was so headlong. Much might happen before Christmas. And what of Mr. Ratcliffe—this was on her way to the door—had she heard the extraordinary, the really astounding news concerning him that had just reached Lady Bassett's ears? She asked because he and Mrs. Musgrave used to be such friends, though to be sure Mr. Ratcliffe seemed to have thrown off all his old friends of late. Had Muriel actually not heard?

"Heard! Heard what?" Muriel forced out the question from between lips that were white and stiff. She was suddenly afraid—horribly, unspeakably afraid. But she kept her eyes unflinchingly upon Lady Bassett's face. She would sooner die than quail in her presence.

Lady Bassett, holding the door-handle, looked back at her, faintly smiling. "I wonder you have not heard, dear. I thought you were in correspondence with his people. But perhaps they also are in the dark. It is a most unheard-of thing—quite irrevocable I am told. But I always felt that he was a man to do unusual things. There was always to my mind something uncanny, abnormal, something almost superhuman, about him."

"But what has happened to him?" Muriel did not know how she uttered the words; they seemed to come without her own volition. She was conscious of a choking sensation within her as though iron bands were tightening about her heart. It beat in leaps and bounds like a tortured thing striving to escape. But through it all she sat quite motionless, her eyes fixed upon Lady Bassett's face, noting its faint, wry smile, as the eyes of a prisoner on the rack might note the grim lines on the face of the torturer.

"My dear," Lady Bassett said, "he has gone into a Buddhist monastery in Tibet."

Calmly the words fell through smiling lips. Only words! Only words! But with how deadly a thrust they pierced the heart of the woman who heard them none but herself would ever know. She gave no sign of suffering. She only stared wide-eyed before her as an image, devoid of expression, inanimate, sphinx-like, while that awful constriction grew straiter round her heart.

Lady Bassett was already turning to go when the deep voice arrested her.

"Who told you this?"

She looked back, holding the open door. "I scarcely know who first mentioned it. I have heard it from so many people,—in fact the news is general property—Captain Gresham of the Guides told me for one. He has just gone back to Peshawur. The news reached him, I believe, from there. Then there was Colonel Cathcart for another. He was talking of it only this afternoon at the Club, saying what a deplorable example it was for an Englishman to set. He and Mr. Bobby Fraser had quite a hot argument about it. Mr. Fraser has such advanced ideas, but I must admit that I rather admire the staunch way in which he defends them. There, dear child! You must not keep me gossiping any longer. You look positively haggard. I earnestly hope a good sleep will restore you, for I cannot possibly take that wan face to the Rajah's ball'."

Lady Bassett departed with the words, shaking her head tolerantly and still smiling.

But for long after she had gone, Muriel remained with fixed eyes and tense muscles, watching, watching, dumbly, immovably, despairingly, at the locked door of her paradise.

So this was the key to his silence—the reason that her message had gone unanswered. She had stretched out her hands to him too late—too late.

And ever through the barren desert of her vigil a man's voice, vital and passionate, rang and echoed in a maddening, perpetual refrain.

"All your life you will remember that I was once yours to take or to throw away. And—you wanted me, yet—you chose to throw me away."

It was a refrain she had heard often and often before; but it had never tortured her as it tortured her now,—now when her last hope was finally quenched—now when at last she fully realised what it was that had once been hers, and that in her tragic blindness she had wantonly cast away.



CHAPTER LI

THE BIRD OF PARADISE

Muriel did not leave the Residency again until the evening of the State Ball at the palace. Scarcely did she leave her room, pleading intense fatigue as her excuse for this seclusion. But she could not without exciting remark, absent herself from the great function for which ostensibly she had returned to Ghawalkhand.

She wore a dress of unrelieved white for the occasion, for she had but recently discarded her mourning for her father, and her face was almost as devoid of colour. Her dark hair lay in a shadowy mass above her forehead, accentuating her pallor. Her eyes looked out upon the world with tragic indifference, unexpectant, apathetic.

"My dear, you don't look well," said Sir Reginald, as, gorgeous in his glittering uniform, he stood to hand her after his wife into the carriage.

She smiled a little. "It is nothing. I am still rather tired, that's all."

Driving through the gates she looked forth absently and spied the old beggar crouching in his accustomed place. He almost prostrated himself at sight of her, but she had no money with her, nor could she have bestowed any under Lady Bassett's disapproving eye. The carriage rolled on, leaving his obsequiousness unrequited.

Entering the glittering ballroom all hung with glowing colours was like entering a garden of splendid flowers. European and Indian costumes were mingled in shining confusion. A hubbub of music and laughter seemed to engulf them like a rushing torrent.

"Ah, here you are at last!" It was Bobby Fraser's voice at Muriel's side. He looked at her with cheery approval. "I say, you know, you're the queen of this gathering. Pity there isn't a king anywhere about. Perhaps there is, eh? Well, can you give me a dance? Afraid I haven't a waltz left. No matter! We can sit out. I know a cosy corner exactly fitted to my tastes. In fact I've booked it for the evening. And I want a talk with you badly. Number five then. Good-bye!"

He was gone, leaving Muriel with the curious impression that there really was something of importance that he wished to say to her.

She wondered what it was. That he was paying her serious attention she had never for a moment believed, nor had she given him the faintest encouragement to do so. She knew that Lady Bassett thought otherwise, but she had never rated her opinion very highly; and she had never read anything but the most casual friendliness in Bobby's attitude.

Still it disturbed her somewhat, that hint of intimacy that his words portended, and she awaited the dance he had solicited in a state of mind very nearly allied to apprehension. Lady Bassett's suggestions had done for her what no self-consciousness would ever have accomplished unaided. They had implanted within her a deep-rooted misgiving before which all ease of manner fled.

When Bobby Fraser joined her, she was so plainly nervous that he could not fail to remark it. He led her to a quiet corner above the garden that was sheltered from the throng by flowering tamarisks.

"I say," he said, "I hope you are not letting yourself get scared by these infernal budmashes. The reports have all been immensely exaggerated as usual."

"I am not at all scared," she told him. "But wasn't there an Englishman murdered the other day?"

"Oh, yes," he admitted, "but miles and miles away, right the other side of the State. There was nothing in that to alarm any one here. It might have happened anywhere. People are such fools," he threw in vindictively. "Begin to look askance at the native population, and of course they are on the qui vive instantly. It is only to be expected. It was downright madness to send a Resident here. They resent it, you know. But the Rajah's influence is enormous. Nothing could happen here."

"I wonder," said Muriel.

She had scarcely given the matter a thought before, but it was a relief to find some impersonal topic for discussion.

Bobby, however, had no intention of pursuing it further. "Oh, it's self-evident," he said. "They are loyal to the Rajah, and the Rajah is well-known to be loyal to the Crown. It's only these duffers of administrators that make the mischief." He broke into an abrupt laugh, and changed the subject. "Let us talk of something less exasperating. How did you get on while you were away? You must have found the journey across the Plains pretty ghastly."

She told him a little about it, incidentally mentioning Will Musgrave.

"Oh, I know him," he broke in. "An engineer, isn't he? Awfully clever chap. I met him years ago at Sharapura the time Nick Ratcliffe won the Great Mogul's Cup. I told you that story, didn't I?"

Yes, he had done so. She informed him of the fact with an immovable face. It might have been a subject of total indifference to her.

"You know Nick Ratcliffe, don't you?" he pursued, evidently following his own train of thought.

She flushed at the direct question. She had not expected it. "It is a very long time since I last saw him," she said, with a deliberate effort to banish all interest from her voice.

He was not looking at her. He could not have been aware of the flush. Yet he elected to push the matter further.

"A queer fish," he said. "A very queer fish. He has lost his left arm, poor beggar. Did you know?"

Yes, she knew; but she could hardly summon the strength to tell him so. Her fan concealed her quivering lips, but the hand that held it shook uncontrollably.

But he, still casual, continued his desultory harangue. "Always reminds one of a jack-in-the-box—that fellow. Has a knack of popping up when you least expect him. You never know what he will do next. You can only judge him by the things he doesn't do. For instance, there's been a rumour floating about lately that he has just gone into a Tibetan monastery. Heaven knows who started it and why. But it is absolutely untrue. It is the sort of thing that couldn't be true of a man of his temperament. Don't you agree with me? Or perhaps you didn't know him very well, and don't feel qualified to judge."

At this point he pulled out his programme and studied it frowningly. He was plainly not paying much attention to her reply. He seemed to be contemplating something that worried him.

It made it all the easier for her to answer. "No," she said slowly. "I didn't know him very well. But—that rumour was told to me as absolute fact. I—of course—I believed it."

She knew that her face was burning as she ended. She could feel the blood surging through every vein.

"If you want to know what I think," said Bobby Fraser deliberately, "it is that that rumour was a malicious invention of some one's."

"Oh, do you?" she said. "But—but why?"

He turned and looked at her. His usually merry face was stern. "Because," he said, "it served some one's end to make some one else believe that Nick had dropped out for good."

Her eyes fell under his direct look. "I don't understand," she murmured desperately.

"Nor do I," he rejoined, "for certain. I can only surmise. It doesn't do to believe things too readily. One gets let in that way." He rose and offered her his arm. "Come outside for a little. This place is too warm for comfort."

She went with him willingly, thankful to turn her face to the night. A dozen questions hovered on her lips, but she could not ask him one of them. She could only walk beside him and profess to listen to the stream of anecdotes which he began to pour forth for her entertainment.

She did not actually hear one of them. They came to her all jumbled and confused through such a torrent of gladness as surely she had never known before. For the bird in her heart had lifted its head again, and was singing its rapture to the stars.



CHAPTER LII

A WOMAN'S OFFERING

Looking back upon the hours that followed that talk with Bobby behind the tamarisks, Muriel could never recall in detail how they passed. She moved in a whirl, all her pulses racing, all her senses on the alert. None of her partners had ever seen her gay before, but she was gay that night with a spontaneous and wonderful gaiety that came from the very heart of her. It was not a gaiety that manifested itself in words, but it was none the less apparent to those about her. For her eyes shone as though they looked into a radiant future, and she danced as one inspired. She was like a statue waked to splendid life.

Swiftly the hours flew by. She scarcely noted their passage, any more than she noted the careless talk and laughter that hummed around her. She moved in an atmosphere of her own to a melody that none other heard.

The ball was wearing to a close when at length Lady Bassett summoned her to return. Lady Bassett was wearing her most gracious smile.

"You have been much admired to-night, dear child," she murmured to the girl, as they passed into the cloakroom.

Muriel's eyes looked disdainful for an instant, but they could not remain so. As swiftly the happiness flashed back into them.

"I have enjoyed myself," she said simply.

She threw a gauzy scarf about her neck, and turned to go. She did not want her evening spoilt by criticisms however honeyed.

The great marble entrance was crowded with departing guests. She edged her way to one of the pillars at the head of the long flight of steps, watching party after party descend to the waiting carriages. The dancing had not yet ceased, and strains of waltz-music came to her where she stood, fitful, alluring, plaintive. They were playing "The Blue Danube."

She listened to it as one in a dream, and while she listened the tears gathered in her eyes. How was it she had been so slow to understand? Would she ever make it up to him? She wondered how long he meant to keep her in suspense. It was not like him to linger thus if he had indeed received her message. She hoped he would come soon. The waiting was hard to bear.

She called to mind once more the last words he had spoken to her. He had said that he would not swoop a second time, but she could not imagine him doing anything else. He would be sudden, he would be disconcerting, he would be overwhelming. He would come on winged feet in answer to her call, but he would give her no quarter. He would neither ask nor demand. He would simply take.

She caught her breath and hastened to divert her thought, realising that she was on the verge of the old torturing process of self-intimidation which had so often before unnerved her.

The throng about her had lessened considerably. Glancing downwards, she discerned at the foot of the steps the old beggar who so persistently haunted the Residency gates, incurring thereby Lady Bassett's alarmed displeasure. He was crouching well to one side in the familiar attitude of supplication. There were dozens like him in Ghawalkhand, but she knew him by the peculiar, gibbering movement of the wiry beard that protruded from his chuddah. He was repulsive, but in a fashion fascinating. He made her think of a wizened old monkey who had wandered from his kind.

She had come to regard him almost in the light of a protege, and, remembering suddenly that he had besought an alms of her in vain some hours before, she turned impulsively to a man she knew who had just come up.

"Colonel Cathcart, will you lend me a rupee?"

He dived in his pocket and brought out a handful of money. She found the coin she wanted, thanked him with a smile, and began to descend the steps.

The old native was not looking at her. Something else seemed to have caught his attention. For the moment he had ceased to cringe and implore.

She heard Sir Reginald's voice above her. He was standing in talk with the Rajah while he waited for his wife.

And then—she was half-way down the steps when it happened—a sudden loud cry rang fiercely up to her, arresting her where she stood—a man's voice inarticulate at first, bursting from mere sound into furious headlong denunciation.

"You infernal hound!" it cried. "You damned assassin!"

At the same instant the old beggar at the foot of the palace steps sprang panther-like from his crouching position to hurl himself bodily at something that skulked in the shadows beyond him.

The marvellous agility of the action, the unerring precision with which he pounced upon his prey, above all, the voice that had yelled in execration, sent such a stab of amazed recognition through Muriel that she stood for a second as one petrified.

But the next instant all her senses were pricked into alertness by a revolver-shot. Another came, and yet another. They were fighting below like tigers—two men in native dress, swaying, straining, struggling, not three yards from where she stood.

She never fully remembered afterwards how she came to realise that Nick—Nick himself—was there before her in the flesh, fighting like a demon, fighting as she had seen him fight once long ago when every nerve in her body had been strung to agonised repulsion.

She felt no repulsion now—no shrinking of any sort, only a wild anguish of fear for his sake that drove her like a mad creature down the intervening steps, that sent her flashing between him and his adversary, that inspired her to wrench away the smoking revolver from the murderous hand that gripped it.

She went through those awful moments as a woman possessed, blindly obeying the compelling force, goaded by sheer, primaeval instinct to protect her own. It was but a conflict of seconds, but while it lasted she was untrammelled by any doubts or hesitations. She was sublimely sure of herself. She was superbly unafraid.

When it was over, when men crowded round and dragged her enemy back, when the pressing need was past, her courage fell from her like a mantle. She sank down upon the steps, a trembling, hysterical woman, and began to cry.

Some one bent over her, some one whispered soothing words, some one drew the revolver out of her weak grasp. Looking up, she saw the old native beggar upon whom she had thought to bestow her charity.

"Oh, Nick!" she gasped. "Nick!" And there stopped in sudden misgiving. Was this grotesque figure indeed Nick? Could it be—this man who had sat at the Residency gates for weeks, this man to whom she had so often tossed an alms?

Her brain had begun to reel, but she clung to the central idea, as one in deep waters clinging to a spar.

"Speak to me!" she entreated. "Only speak to me!"

But before he could answer, Bobby Fraser pushed suddenly forward, bent over, lifted her. "You are not hurt, Miss Roscoe?" he questioned anxiously, deep concern on his kindly face. "The damned swine didn't touch you? There! Come back into the palace. You're the bravest girl I ever met."

He began to help her up the steps, but though she was spent and near to fainting she resisted him.

"That man—" she faltered. "Don't—don't let him go!"

"Certainly not," said Bobby promptly. "Here, you old scarecrow, come and lend a hand!"

But the old scarecrow apparently had other plans for himself, for he had already vanished from the scene as swiftly and noiselessly as a shadow from a sheet.

"He is gone!" wailed Muriel. "He is gone! Oh, why did you let him go?"

"He'll turn up again," said Bobby consolingly. "That sort of chap always does. I say, how ghastly you look! Take my arm! You are not going to faint, are you? Ah, here is Colonel Cathcart! Miss Roscoe isn't hurt, sir—only upset. Can't we get her back to the palace?"

They bore her back between them, and left her to be tended by the women. She was not unconscious, but the shock had utterly unstrung her. She lay with closed eyes, listening vaguely to the buzz of excited comment about her, and wondering, wondering with an aching heart, why he had gone.

No one seemed to know exactly what had taken place, and she was too exhausted to tell. Possibly she would hot have told in any case. It was known only that an attempt had been made upon the life of the British Resident, Sir Reginald Bassett, and it was surmised that Muriel had realised the murderous intention in time to frustrate it. Certainly a native had tried to help her, but since the native had disappeared, his share in the conflict was not regarded as very great. As a matter of fact, the light had been too uncertain and the struggle too confused for even the eye-witnesses to know with any certainty what had taken place. Theories and speculations were many and various, but not one of them went near to the truth.

"Dear Muriel will tell us presently just how it happened," Lady Bassett said in her soft voice.

But Muriel was as one who heard not. She would not even open her eyes till Sir Reginald came to her, pillowed her head against him, kissed her white face, and called her his brave little girl.

That moved her at last, awaking in her the old piteous hunger, never wholly stifled, for her father. She turned and clung to him convulsively with an inarticulate murmuring that ended in passionate tears.



CHAPTER LIII

THE LAST SKIRMISH

Why had he gone? That was the question that vexed Muriel's soul through the long hours that followed her return to the Residency. Lying sleepless on her bed, she racked her weary brain for an answer to the riddle, but found none. Her brief doubt regarding him had long since fled. She knew with absolute certainty that it was Nick and no other who had yelled those furious words, who had made that panther-spring, who had leaned over her and withdrawn the revolver from her hold, telling her softly not to cry. But why had he gone just then when she needed him most?

Surely by now her message had reached him! Surely he knew that she wanted him, that she had lowered what he had termed her miserable little rag of pride to tell him so! Then why was he tormenting her thus—playing with her as a cat might play with a mouse? Was he taking his revenge for all the bitter scorn she had flung at him in the past? Did he think to wring from her some more definite appeal? Ah, that was it! Like a searchlight flashing inwards, she remembered her promise to him uttered long ago against her will—his answering oath. And she knew that he meant to hold her to that promise—that he would exact the very uttermost sacrifice that it entailed; and then perchance—she shivered at the unendurable thought—he would laugh his baffling, enigmatical laugh, and go his way.

But this was unbearable, impossible. She would sooner die than suffer it. She would sooner—yes, she would almost sooner—break her promise.

And then, to save her from distraction, the other side of the picture presented itself, that reverse side which he had once tauntingly advised her to study. If he truly loved her, he would not treat her thus. It would not gratify him to see her in the dust. If he still cared, as Daisy had assured her he did, it would not be his pleasure to make her suffer. But then again—oh, torturing question!—had that been so, would he have gone at that critical moment, would he have left her, when a look, a touch, would have sufficed to establish complete understanding?

Drearily the hours dragged away. The heat was great, and just before daybreak a thunder-storm rolled up, but spent itself without a drop of rain. It put the finishing touches to Muriel's restlessness. She rose and dressed, to sit by her window with her torturing thoughts for company, and awaited the day.

With the passing of the storm a slight draught that was like a shudder moved the scorched leaves of the acacias in the compound, quivered a little, and ceased. Then came the dawn, revealing mass upon mass of piled cloud hanging low over the earth. The breaking of the monsoon was drawing very near. There could be no lifting of the atmosphere, no relief, until it came.

She leaned her aching head against the window-frame in a maze of weariness unutterable. Her heart was too heavy for prayer.

Minutes passed. The daylight grew and swiftly overspread all things. The leaden silence began to be pierced here and there by the barking of a dog, the crowing of a cock, the scolding of a parrot. Somewhere, either in the compound or close to it, some one began to whistle—a soft, tentative whistle, like a young blackbird trying its notes.

Muriel remained motionless, scarcely heeding while it wove itself into the background of her thoughts. She was in fact hardly aware of it, till suddenly, with a great thrill of astonishment that shook her from head to foot, a wild suspicion seized her, and she started up, listening intently. The fitful notes were resolving into a melody—a waltz she knew, alluring, enchanting, compelling—the waltz that had filled in the dreadful silences on that night long ago when she had fought so desperately hard for her freedom and had prevailed at last. But stay! Had she prevailed? Had she not rather been a captive in spite of it all ever since?