“Oh, I’m dying to hear. The carriage can go back now. I shall not go out this afternoon.”
Half an hour later she was hearing about the accident at the spring hole.
“You ran a great risk,” she said. “Piers, did you never think of me when you took your life in your hands?”
“Very much so. But I couldn’t stand by and leave her to drown, could I?”
“Of course not I was only trying you. But—tell me. Did it bring back just a little of the old feeling? Not a wee tiny echo of it?”
He took her hands in his.
“Not the faintest shadow, darling. You believed in me from the very first—that other one did not. And besides—”
“And besides—what?”
“You are infinitely the more beautiful of the two.”
“I shan’t be that long if you go on giving me what you men call ‘swelled head’,” she answered brightly. “Look. There’s the post African mail day too.”