'All I want,' whispered the war-correspondent, following her glance, 'is three minutes' start from that man.'
'You had better go!' she answered anxiously below her breath.
'Yes; they are on the stairs ... but ... tell me, Brenda, promise me on your honour, that he did not hurt you.'
'I promise you,' she said, with a faint smile.
Then he left her.
CHAPTER VI.
TRIST ACTS ON HIS OWN RESPONSIBILITY.
As Mrs. Wylie made her way slowly and peacefully up the broad stairs, she suddenly found herself face to face with the man whom she had last seen in the still Arctic dawn, bearing the body of her dead husband down over the rocks towards her. She gave a little gasp of surprise, but nothing more. The next instant she was holding out her gloved hand to greet him. But even she—practised, gifted woman of the world as she was—could not meet him with a smile. In gravity they had parted, gravely they now met again. He was not quite the same as other men to Mrs. Wylie, for there was the remembrance of an indefinite semi-bantering agreement made months before, while the sunshine of life seemed to be glowing round them both—an agreement that they should not be mere acquaintances, mere friends (although the friendship existing between an elderly woman and a young man is not of the ordinary, practical, every-day type—there is a suggestion of something more in it), and Trist had fulfilled the promise then given.
He had taken her quite unawares, with that noiseless footstep of his which we noticed before, and the colour left her face for a moment.
'You!' she exclaimed; 'I did not expect you.'