"Ah, mia carrissima," he said, taking her in his arms. "You have missed me."
"Yes," she said, with a little sigh of satisfied relief, as she felt his strong embrace about her. "But why did you leave me? I do not understand."
"The air of the room oppressed me. I came out to breathe."
"I did not know," she said. "I was frightened." And as she raised her face to him, he saw that she had been crying.
She might well have commanded any man's attention. Tall and slight, lissome in every movement of her exquisitely shaped figure, barely thirty, and very fair withal. Even the tears which sparkled on her long lashes could not obscure the superb black eyes full of a passion which betrayed Castilian parentage as surely as did those finely-chiselled features, and that silky crown of hair which, unbound, must have descended to her feet. Half Spanish, half Greek, she was a woman to be looked upon and loved.
"But, Inez, surely you trusted me?" came the suave tones of expostulation from her husband.
"Trusted you, my knight? Have I not trusted you this day with my soul, with my whole life? You have been so near to death's door, and I have been so near to losing you, that I fear now, every moment you are out of my sight."
"Oh, I don't think there is any danger," he said, laughing. "I am strong enough now, though I daresay I should never have pulled through without such a plucky nurse."
"Ah, yes," she said. "I can shut my eyes and see you now, how frightfully ill and worn you were, when you came to my father's house that night, three months ago, invalided home from India."
"Yes," he said. "It was the greatest stroke of luck in my life that I should have lost my way and have been obliged to beg your hospitality for the night."