They were returning by a somewhat different route, and were already about half-way to the camp. The sun was sinking, and the barren and rugged surface of rock and stunted vegetation was taking on a softer tinge as the westering glow toned down its asperities. But there was a feel in the air as of impending change, and the wind, which had died down altogether, now began to rise in fitful puffs, raising thin spiral columns like dust waterspouts, which whirled along at intervals on the plain around.
“Is there going to be a storm?” said Hilda.
“Yes. But not before we are in camp again.”
He subsided into silence. It was possible that the strange oppressiveness in the atmosphere affected him, to the exaggeration of that which was on his mind, to wit the very disagreeable burden of the news he had just received. Or it may have been that the certainty was brought home to him that a month ago it would not have affected him to any appreciable extent. The unpleasantness, the scandal, would have been just the same, but, somehow, it would have mattered little then. Now it did. But why?
What was to be done? was his ever-present thought. It was simply abominable that he should be pursued in this way. Had the woman no sense of shame? Evidently not. He had heard of ships going down at sea with all on board; was he tempted to feel that this was clearly too good a piece of luck—seen from his point of view—to happen to the one which comprised among its passengers Cynthia Daintree?
What was to be done? He looked at his companion. Should he frankly put the case to her? She was like no other woman he had ever known for clear insight into and ready grasp of the main facts or probabilities of any given question—at least, so he had found reason to decide during their somewhat short acquaintance—which, somehow or other, did not seem short. She could not be more than five or six and twenty at the outside, and yet the knowledge of human nature and capacity for the analysis of human motives she displayed was simply wonderful. He could put it to her as the case of a third party, or simply a case in the abstract, such as they had often debated and threshed out together, and then he laughed at himself in bitter contempt. Where were the qualities with which he had just been endowing her, that she could fail for one single instant to see through so miserable a device? He must put it to her frankly or not at all; and somehow Hilda Clive was the last person in the world to whom he desired to put it at all.
She, for her part, riding beside him, perforce in silence, was thinking of him and his unwonted taciturnity. Some trouble had come upon him—that was certain, and she connected it with the arrival of the mail. Could she but induce him to confide in her? Yet, why should he? She did not know. Still, she wanted him to; for a strange indefinable instinct moved her to the conviction that she could help him. During their acquaintance she had learnt to hold him in high esteem. She admired him, too, for his unassuming nature, the more so that she was able to gauge the real depth of quiet power that lay beneath it. She had noted the ease of his intercourse with these wild and turbulent, but interesting people—for this visit to Sarbaland Khan’s village was not the first time she had been among them in Raynier’s company—and noting it, knew that it bore testimony to the estimation in which he was held by them; for these sons of the desert and mountain, in common with all barbarians, are quick readers of character, and have no respect for that which is weak. And yet, could she have divined what was troubling him then it would have assumed such trivial proportions to her mind, so simple a solution, as to make her laugh outright. And she knew a great deal more about him than he did about her; indeed, the news she had received that morning, and which had somewhat elated her, mainly concerned him.
“What abstruse problem is weighing on your mind, Mr Raynier? Do you know that since we left the chief’s village you have hardly spoken a word. And we are almost home again.”
He started.
“I beg your pardon. How very remiss of me. Well, I was thinking of something. As a matter of fact, it’s something that’s worrying me more than a little.”