"One is assured that what is done is necessary," he said in slow deliberate English. "I am, however, not a commercialist."
"You, of course, believe those assurances?"
The little white-clad gentleman smiled in a somewhat curious fashion. "A wise man believes what is told him—while it is expedient. Some day, perhaps, the time comes when it is no longer so."
"And then?"
A faint, suggestive glint replaced the smile in the keen dark eyes. "Then he acts on what he thinks himself. Though I can not remember when, it seems to me, senhor, that I have had the pleasure of meeting you before."
"You have," said Ormsgill dryly. "It was one very hot morning in the rainy season, and you were sitting at breakfast outside a tent beneath a great rock. Two files of infantry accompanied me."
"I recollect perfectly. Still, as it happens, I had just finished breakfast, which was, I think, in some respects fortunate. One is rather apt to proceed summarily before it—in the rainy season."
Ormsgill laughed, and the girl who sat beside the man he had spoken to flashed a swift glance at him. She was dressed in some thin, soft fabric, of a pale gold tint, and the firm, round modeling of the figure it clung about proclaimed her a native of the Iberian peninsula, the Peninsula, as those who are born there love to call it. Still, there was no tinge of olive in her face, which, like her arms and shoulders, was of the whiteness of ivory. Her eyes, which had a faint scintillation in them, were of a violet black, and her hair of the tint of ebony, though it was lustrous, too. She, however, said nothing, and Major Chillingham, who seemed to feel himself neglected, broke in.
"I'm afraid you were at your old tricks again, Tom," he said. "What had you been up to then?"
"Interfering with two or three black soldiers, who resented it. They were trying to burn up a native hut with a couple of wounded niggers inside it. I believe there was a woman inside it, too."