Tessa's sobbing died down, and there fell a strained silence. Stella still sat in the drawing-room, but she was out of sight of the two on the verandah. She could only hear Peter's soft movements.
Suddenly she heard a tense whisper. "Peter! Peter! Quick!"
Like a shadow Peter crossed her line of vision. She heard a murmured, "Missy babal" and rising, she bent forward and saw him in the act of severing Tessa's bond with the bread-knife. It was done in a few hard-breathing seconds. The child was free. Peter turned in triumph,—and found Monck standing at the other end of the verandah, looking at him.
Stella stepped out at the same moment and saw him also. She felt the blood rush to her heart. Only once had she seen Monck look as he looked now, and that on an occasion of which even yet she never willingly suffered herself to think.
Peter's triumph wilted. "Run, Missy baba!" he said, in a hurried whisper, and moved himself to meet the wrath of the gods.
Tessa did not run. Neither did she spring to Stella for protection. She stood for a second or two in indecision; then with an odd little strangled cry she darted in front of Peter, and went straight to Monck.
"It—it wasn't Peter's fault!" she declared breathlessly. "I told him to!"
Monck's eyes went over her head to the native beyond her. He spoke—a few, brief words in the man's own language—and Peter winced as though he had been struck with a whip, and bent himself in an attitude of the most profound humility.
Monck spoke again curtly, and as if at the sudden jerk of a string the man straightened himself and went away.
Then Tessa, weeping, threw herself upon Monck. "Do please not be angry with him! It was all my fault. You—you—you can whip me if you like! Only you mustn't be cross with Peter! It isn't—it isn't—fair!"