He bent over her, but she drew away quickly with a gesture of repulsion, which Andrews was quick to note. It cut him cruelly, and he stepped back, pained and crestfallen.
In the instant of silence that ensued he swept her with a devouring gaze from head to foot. Was he to lose her again—now, when for a second time he had been so sure?
One dainty, white-shod foot was stretched out from beneath her skirt, and as his eyes reached it a dark, smearlike stain across the toe arrested his attention and awoke a question. Impulsively he dropped to one knee and swept a finger across it.
"Nina!" he cried, springing up again, a note of alarm in his voice. "Look! There is blood on your slipper. It couldn't have been the khitmatgar. The bullet ricochetted and wounded some one. Who was it?"
She leaned forward, her heart pounding with sudden horror, and saw it for herself.
"But how—" she queried, her breath short and quick.
"From the shrubbery at the side of the veranda. Your foot must have touched the leaves. If it had been the khitmatgar who was bleeding like that he couldn't have hidden it."
She was up in an instant, crying: "What have I done? Oh, what have I done?"
"Between us," said Andrews, "we've managed to wing some prowling beggar of a native, I fancy. That's all." He said it in an effort to pacify her, but he knew in his heart that it was no native.
He had known from the first that Nina's scream, emotion, and pallor were results of the unexpected. Now he was more certain than ever that he was right.