"Stella, too, will suffer," she said.
"Worse than she does now?" asked Thresk.
"No. But her position will be difficult for awhile at least," and she came towards Thresk and pleaded.
"You will be thoughtful of her, for her? Oh, if you should play her false—how I should hate you!" and her eyes flashed fire at him.
"I don't think that you need fear that."
But he was too calm for her, too quiet. She was in the mood to want heroics. She clamoured for protestations as a drug for her uneasy mind. And Thresk stood before her without one. She searched his face with doubtful eyes. Oh, there seemed to her no tenderness in it.
"She will need—love," said Mrs. Repton. "There—that's the word. Can you give it her?"
"If she comes to me—yes. I have wanted her for eight years," and then suddenly she got, not heroics, but a glimpse of a real passion. A spasm of pain convulsed his face. He sat down and beat with his fist upon the table. "It was horrible to me to ride away from that camp and leave her there—miles away from any friend. I would have torn her from him by force if there had been a single hope that way. But his levies would have barred the road. No, this was the only chance: to come away to Bombay, to write to her that the first day, the first night she is able to slip out and travel here she will find me waiting."
Mrs. Repton was satisfied. But while he had been speaking a new fear had entered into her.
"There's something I should have thought of," she exclaimed.