"No, no!" he answered. "The Fort is your business, and it may prove a big one. Chantry is going in with me, and Langford, who's an old cavalryman, will take the escort. I've sent down word of what I'm doing, but I'll leave a fuller account with you, in case anything goes wrong." He turned with Chantry to leave the room, calling back from the doorway: "By the way, the polo's to come off to-morrow afternoon as we arranged. You're playing, aren't you?"
"Yes, sir," replied the other, watching the two figures pass out of the verandah, and seem to shrink as they were immersed in the fierce yellow of the sun.
Then he turned, and met Rose Chantry's eyes.
She had flung herself into a long chair: her knees were crossed; her head thrown back; her hands clasped behind it. To Terrington's vision the tip of her toe, her knee and her chin were in a line; and the absurd little sole of her shoe, with its elfin instep and the arch curl of its heel, made a print on his memory in which it was afterwards to tread.
"Well!" she said, with her tantalizing smile, "was the chikor good?"
"Excellent," he answered.
Her lips fluttered like the wings of a bird.
"Didn't it taste of defeat?" she suggested, the dark lids drooping over her eyes.
"No," he said gravely, "it tasted extremely game."
She swept him with her covert glances, but his had fallen to her foot.