So mechanically, so fast she covered the ground. Suddenly a voice called out, "Halt! Who's there? Mrs. Cartwright?"
With a start, she found that she was in the forest, approaching the clearing and the woodcutter's hut. The sturdy, square-set figure that, coming away from the hut, had encountered her on the moon-dappled path, was that of Captain Ross.
"Hullo!" she returned, brightly. "Have you been cat-calling on Mr. Brown? Isn't it perfectly lovely? After all, this is the time of day to go for walks, I find."
"Is that so? I thought this was the time of day you sat writing your great worrrks."
"Sometimes; but how did you know?"
"You told me you were sitting up working that last time Awdas had that infairrrnal dream of his," said the Staff-officer. "That was how."
But at this the machinery that had kept Mrs.
Cartwright going so steadily for the last hour or more, broke down without warning. Without warning, she blurted out in a low, unnatural voice, "Oh, Captain Ross! I am——in such trouble."
Her limbs failed her and she would have fallen.
The next moment she found that she was sitting upon a pine-log, with her head upon the solid support of Captain Ross's shoulder, and with his arm thrown very comfortingly about her. She wept, copiously and silently, all her tears; the only tears a man had ever seen Claudia Cartwright shed.