"Tessa!" exclaimed Stella.
Tessa turned flushed cheeks and shining eyes upon her. "I would!" she declared stoutly. "I would! There's nothing wrong in that. He's a horrid man. It isn't wrong, is it, Captain Monck? But if he shot my Daddy?" She went swiftly to Monck with the words and leaned ingratiatingly against him. "You'd kill a man yourself that did a thing like that, wouldn't you?"
"Very likely," said Monck.
She gazed at him admiringly. "I expect you've killed lots and lots of men, haven't you?" she said.
He smiled with a touch of grimness. "Do you think I'm going to tell a scaramouch like you?" he said.
"Everard!" Stella rose and came to the window. "Do—please—make her understand that people don't murder each other just whenever they feel like it—even in India!"
He raised his eyes to hers, and an odd sense of shock went through her. It was as if in some fashion he had deliberately made her aware of that secret chamber which she might not enter. "I think you would probably be more convincing on that point than I should," he said.
She gave a little shudder; she could not restrain it. That look in his eyes reminded her of something, something dreadful. What was it? Ah yes, she remembered now. He had had that look on that night of terror when he had first called her his wife, when he had barred the window behind her and sworn to slay any man who should come between them.
She turned aside and went in without another word. India again! India the savage, the implacable, the ruthless! She felt as a prisoner who battered fruitlessly against an iron door.
Tessa's inquisitive eyes followed her. "She's going to cry," she said to Monck.