“I might say the same of you. You, too, have been awake all night.”
“Oh, dear no; nothing like it. And now—and now we are alone, I want really to thank you as I ought, but—but—I don’t know how,” broke off the girl, with a comic ruefulness that was inexpressibly bewitching. “Really, though, I never was further from joking in my life. Now that I have seen what those dreadful savages are like, I seem to realise what a frightful fate you saved me from,” she added earnestly, with a lovely flush.
“Let us talk of something else,” he answered, somewhat abruptly. “You showed extraordinary grit during the recent little unpleasantness between us and our red brothers. May I ask where, when, and how you served your apprenticeship as an Indian fighter?”
She laughed and gave a slight shiver. Now that they were over, the appalling experiences of the early morning could not but tell upon her. She was rather pale, and dark circles round her eyes told of an apprehensive and restless night.
“Poor Mrs Winthrop is quite ill this morning, and no wonder. I hope we shall have no more of those frightful experiences. And yet, to look round the camp no one would suspect that anything out of the way had happened.”
Vipan followed her glance. He was glad that all traces of the bloody struggle had been removed—the dead bodies, including that of the unfortunate emigrant who had been scalped, had been buried while the terrified and worn-out women were sleeping the slumber of exhaustion.
“No, it was all horrible—horrible,” Yseulte went on, speaking gravely and sadly. “If I was not half-dead with fear it was thanks to my father’s teaching. He always used to say that panic was fatal to self-respect, and still more fatal to self-preservation. Child as I was, the idea took root, and I was able to conquer my fears of bulls or savage dogs, or mysterious noises at night, or at any rate very nearly so.”
“Quite, I should say. Your father must be a somewhat rare type of man.”
“He is. Wait till you see him. Then you will think so.”
“Is he coming out here, then?”