"What is the matter?" he asked briefly, sternly; for it came home to him also that the cause must be grave.
She gave a little shiver; the hearing of that first greeting had upset her calm, her courage, at last. Yet they had been firm till then; and, Heaven knows! the long hours of slipping through the rapids in the wake of that heaving, plunging mass of logs had been trying enough to anyone. Then for the last half hour, since Am-ma had cut the raft adrift to follow them at its leisure through the slacker currents, and, in obedience to her order, had forged ahead with his paddle, her anxiety had risen to fever-pitch; since the night, so far as she could judge, must be waning fast, and her errand would be useless if she were not in Eshwara before the dawn. For, as she had listened to Am-ma's garrulous talk while he steered, the conviction had grown that the danger to peace and safety--if there was any--lay in the future, not in the past; that this dawn, and not yesterday's, was to be the signal for the insensate, almost incredible attempt to wreck authority. An attempt which yet--incredible, insensate though it be--might bring death to--to one she held very dear.
She admitted so much now to herself, and, pulling that self together, looked that dear one in the face. "There is a good deal the matter," she said. "You had better call Captain Dering to hear it, too; it will save time."
He nodded acquiescence, but ere he left her, the instinct in him to guard his "dearest atom" to the uttermost from others, made him set a chair for her, and, glancing round for a wrap, take the mess jacket he had laid aside for a smoking coat, and fold it round her. For the air had grown suddenly chill, as it always does in a sand-storm.
"You must be cold in that dress," he said. As he did so the daintiness of it struck him, the scent of the orange blossoms made him turn pale. Despite his hurry, his certainty that something serious was ahead, he paused to ask sharply: "That is your wedding dress, isn't it?"--
"I am not married, if you mean that!" she answered as sharply. Then she flushed up angrily, more at the comprehension shown in her own answer than the meaning in his question, and burst out: "What does it matter if I am--or if it is? Go! I tell you, and call Captain Dering!"
Yet, when he was gone, she lay back in the chair and shivered again; all the more because of the unaccustomed touch about her throat of the gold lace on a mess jacket. How red it looked against her white dress! And what a lot of little gold buttons there were at its edge: foolish, useless, little ornamental gilt buttons, round and red-gold, like--
The comparison brought back Lance's cry of welcome, and made her realize that, quite mechanically, she still held in her hand that useless, foolish, unnecessary orange!
That, of course, was what had made him remember; had made him say those words which had come like the writing on the wall to remind her of her own guilt.
She flung the fruit from her, hastily, into the unseen river beyond the arches. Only just in time, ere Lance reëntered, with a puzzled face.