Her pride was roused. The pulse of anger began to tint her face with a dull crimson. "I should imagine I could distinguish my own reflection from three men—rough-looking men with slouched hats, all running and looking backward over their shoulders."
It had been a conscious effort to nerve herself for this protest in defence of her poise and capacity, but at the mere recollection of the scene she had conjured up anew she fell to trembling, looking very pale again and as if she might faint.
"Well, it is no great matter, as the intruders were bluffed off," he said suavely, putting the question aside. "I will send one of Briscoe's grooms to investigate the premises. But now, suppose we go to the piazza, and let you rest there and recover from the strain to your ankle." Once more he glanced down at the dainty shoe with its high French heel. "I don't wonder it turned. A proper shoe for mountaineering!" That rancor against a frivolity of feminine fashion that holds a menace to health or safety, so characteristic of the utilitarian masculine mind, was a touch of his old individuality, and it made him seem to her more like himself of yore. The resemblance did not tend to confirm her composure, and she was almost piteous as she protested that she could not, she would not, go near the hotel again.
"Why, you need not, then," he reassured her abruptly, waiving the possibility of insistence, as much as to say it was no concern of his.
"I might walk to the observatory," she suggested, "and—and—I need not detain you then."
"In view of three bandits in slouched hats, although all on the back-track—and although I am convinced that it was but their astral apparitions with which you were favored—I will venture to intrude my society until I can see you to the Briscoe bungalow."
"Oh, there's no intrusion," she rejoined petulantly. "You must know I couldn't mean that!"
"I never know what you mean, I am sure!" he said with that tense note of satire. Then he paused with a vague wonder at himself thus to trench on the emotional phases between them that must be buried forever. Remembering her own allusion that morning, her cry of regret and appeal, he was apprehensive of some renewal of the topic that he had thus invited, and he began to move hastily down the slope, supporting her with care, but with a certain urgency too. He was obviously eager to terminate the conversational opportunity, and when it was requisite to pause to rest he improved the respite by beckoning to one of the stablemen passing near, bound toward a pasture in the rear of the hotel with a halter in his hand, and ordering him to investigate the building to discover any signs of intrusion.
The man hearkened in patent surprise, then asked if he might defer the commission till he had harnessed Fairy-foot, Mr. Briscoe having ordered out the dog-cart and his favorite mare.
"Plenty of time, plenty of time! We can't hope to overtake them, with the start they have already. Just see if there are any signs of intrusion into the place and report. And now, Mrs. Royston, shall we move on?"