She caught a glimpse of his drawn, miserable face.
"You think—things are pretty bad?" she asked, gropingly. "Something will happen?"
"Sure." His grip tightened on the reins. "Something—God knows what—but something——"
CHAPTER VIII
THE TWO LISTENERS
It was typical of Owen Meredith that, as he left the Boucicaults' compound behind him, he put aside his own grief and turned sternly to the duty that lay nearest him. That duty concerned Ayeshi. Possibly, had Ayeshi been moulded in the common clay of his race, Meredith might have taken his duty with less seriousness, though his blood would still have burnt at Boucicault's wanton brutality—as it was, a long-considered purpose now took a definite form.
It chanced that, as Meredith trudged on his way to the Mission, the Rajah's English dog-cart swerved round a bend of the dusty road, and came down upon him with the best speed of a rather showy high-stepper. Rasaldû drove himself, the knowledge of animals being the one talent that he appeared to have inherited from his cowherd ancestry, and, recognizing Meredith, he drew up so smartly as almost to jerk his attendant from off his precarious perch in the rear.
"I have just come down from the dâk-bungalow," he explained. "I was to have taken Mademoiselle Fersen out with my new cob—beauty, eh?—but she was out. Happened to have seen her?"
Meredith accepted the fat brown hand extended towards him.
"I left her at the Boucicaults'," he said. "But that was some time back. It was Miss Boucicault's birthday, you know."