Angel still sat with her eyes on the ground, and made no sign whatever. Truly, this Angel was a stranger, an alien, and ill-understood!
"It was for your own sake I have been holding back," he resumed with an effort—was he sure that he was speaking the truth? "I am a busy, self-centred man—I live in a groove—I feared your gay young life would be dull—with me."
"Never dull with you, Philip—you know that," she murmured under her breath.
"Will you think it over, and give me an answer when I come out on Wednesday?"
Angel made no reply. Her cousin looked at her downcast eyes, her twitching nostrils, and resumed, "If you wish to return home, of course I will do all in my power to help you." As he continued his voice was less steady, some inward barrier seemed to have given way under a confused pressure of emotion. "If you decide to stay—and I hope from my heart you will—then," and he stooped and kissed her hand, "when I come again, wear a flower in your dress."
Mrs. Gordon was sitting under the fly of her tent engrossed in a novel, when Major Gascoigne galloped up on Wednesday afternoon, having covered the forty miles which lay between Marwar and the camp in an extraordinarily short time. He had three horses posted on the road, and the bay Arab he rode was in a lather. Why this unusual haste? was Mrs. Gordon's mental interrogation. The reply came in a flash of prophetic insight. She interpreted her visitor's strange air of repressed excitement, his reckless ride; he had spoken to Angel, and had come for her reply.
"Where is Angel?" he asked, as soon as he had dismounted and exchanged a few words of greeting.
"Down by the well near the tamarinds, reading. Perhaps you will take her these letters?" suggested clever Mrs. Gordon, selecting two from a budget he had delivered; "and bring her back to tea."
"All right," he replied, "I'll be postman;" and without further parley, but with suspicious alacrity, he departed. In a short time he came in sight of Angel. She was sitting under the shade of an ancient tamarind—no tree in all the world is more beautiful; a book lay unheeded on her lap.