"You mean you do not want me any more?"
"No—!" she moaned, in the stupor of horror and despair. And then the brown man, the native, whose blood had been roused by every agency that can stir wild blood to frenzy—by love and shame, by drink, by battle and triumph—then Motauri, the high chief, struck unerringly to the heart of the matter and made his swift decision by his own primitive lights. Recovering her shawl he wrapped it about her tightly, caught her up once more willy-nilly in his arms and bore her away from that sinister place by force....
She was lying on a bench in the veranda of her father's house and her father himself was calling her name, when she came to herself.
"Matilda, I'm speaking to you! Where are you?"
He came through the window of her room.
"Gracious me!—have you been sleeping out there?"
She could only stare at him and down at the twisted shawl about her, for it seemed it must be so, she had only been sleeping—with what dreams!
But his next words showed her the truth.
"Matilda, my dear," he quavered, "you must prepare yourself. Be brave. Something dreadful has happened. One of Captain Gregson's boys has just come up from the village with terrible news. The Captain is dead! He had some kind of a stroke, it seems—very sudden—all alone at the time. I shall have to hurry right down. And at this hour too, when the woods are so damp! What a loss, what a loss, Matilda, when I had so hoped—!"
He left her, and it came to her then that she too had hoped and that she too had lost. The mountain stream was singing in her ears, and it seemed threaded with mockery. The moonlight came filtering through the vine, and it was old and cold. Her wonderful night was over. She was safe. Her life would begin again where she had dropped it, in formulated routine, and nobody would ever know—unless Motauri—