The Last of Their Race

by Annie S. Swan

She shook her head.

"I don't think so. If there is any more to be said there will be time to say it to-morrow. You will help me to do the right thing, won't you? It is--it is what I look for in you."

The words were a rebuke to Peter Rosmead, but he took it well.

"I will do the right thing--yes," he answered humbly, "but only until we get back to Glenogle. Then, I warn you, I'm going to fight for you with all the powers I possess. I don't know how it is going to be done, but win you I shall. You have not come into my life only to go out of it again."

She smiled as she turned away, and a strange, deep contentment, gathered in her eyes. She asked no questions, troubled herself not at all about what was coming. So far as she was concerned the fight was over, and the issue lay with Peter Rosmead. Her trust in him was so large and fine a thing that she was content to leave herself and her cause in his strong, tender hands and to let him undertake for her.

They parted then, and they met no more until they entered the train together at Euston next morning. But during the hours of that interminable day there was no sense of distance or of separation between them. The same sky covered them, they breathed the same air, they were within call of each other; it sufficed.

Rosmead went early to the station, and he had made his full arrangements for Isla's comfort by the time she arrived. She smiled when she saw a first-class compartment marked "reserved," but she made neither remark nor demur. She had left him to legislate for her and would not cavil at trifles. That she was happy for the moment there was no need to ask.

Many times that day when Rosmead looked at her dear face he registered a mighty vow that the man did not live who would be able to keep her from him. Drummond must take his defeat like a man. He was young, and there were others to choose from. In all his life Rosmead had not, until now, met a woman who could stir his pulses or make him long to lay his freedom at her feet as a thing for which he had no further use.

The train glided out of the station, and the sunshine was upon their faces and in their hearts. Rosmead, an accomplished traveller, had left nothing undone to secure the comfort of his fellow-traveller, but all his love and care were powerless to save her from the last bomb flung by fate.

She did not care for papers, she said, but she begged him to look at his, while she watched the swift retreat of London roofs before the speeding train.