Ingleby got it and then stood leaning on the table, while Leger still knelt by his sister's side. His face was set and anxious, but it was evident that he was equal to the occasion, and had not let his apprehensions master him. It was, however, different with Ingleby, for now there was no longer anything to do he felt that he was quivering.
"I'll run for the American who's looking after Tomlinson," he said.
Leger made a little sign. "No. Don't go. I may want you. She'll come round in a minute or two. This room must have been seventy, and outside it's forty below. Where has your nerve gone?"
Ingleby did not know. It had, however, certainly deserted him, and he felt for once scarcely capable of doing anything as he leaned upon the table. Then Leger, who slipped the locket back beneath the dress, looked up at him.
"She mightn't like to think we had seen it, and, of course, I didn't know what the thing was," he said, and then added, without moving his eyes from Ingleby, "I wonder where she got it?"
Ingleby said nothing, though he knew. He had bought her the little trinket in England long ago, but it seemed to him that Hetty might not like her brother to know it. Apart from that, he was scarcely sensible of anything clearly, for he was overwhelmed by a horrible confusion, and he looked down at Leger vacantly until a little shiver seemed to run through the girl.
"Now see if you can find the coffee," said his comrade sharply. "There is a little somewhere. We have nothing else to give her."
Ingleby waited another moment until he saw a faint tinge of colour creep into Hetty's face, and then he moved towards the box of stores, dazed from relief. He was busy for a moment or two, and when he turned again Hetty was lying in the low hide-chair with her brother's arm about her and the blanket-coat clutched closely to her neck. Leger flashed a swift glance at him and pointed towards the door.
"I think it would be better if you got out of this," he said.
Ingleby also thought so and went forthwith. He felt that he could not meet Hetty's eyes just then, and he wanted to be alone and get rid of the almost insufferable confusion that afflicted him. He had never made love to Hetty. They had been comrades, almost as brother and sister to each other; but she had worn his locket hidden on her breast, which was, he surmised, considerably more than a sister would have done. Brotherly tenderness could also, he realized, scarcely account for the uneasiness he had felt and the relief that had replaced it; but it appeared quite out of the question—in fact, a thought to shrink from—that he could be in love with two women. It was as unpleasant to contemplate the probability of two women being in love with him. He could find no solution of the problem as he swung along beneath the solemn pines, and when he reached his black and silent shanty his brain was still in a whirl. One thing alone was clear to him, and that was that Hetty was alive and apparently recovering.