"But I must—" she began, and stopped with a little cry as a shot rang out from the heart of the thicket, to be followed by another and then by a shriek of agony and a great confusion of sounds—shouts and oaths and noisy crashings in the tamarisks as of many men blundering hither and yon.
Silenced, with a slight shudder of apprehension, the girl drew to Amber's side, as if instinctively. He took her hand and drew it through his arm.
"Run to earth at last!" cried Labertouche. "I wonder—"
"If my hope's good for anything," Amber laughed, less because he felt like laughing than for the purpose of reassuring Sophia, "this will be the gentleman who trained the Hooded Death to dance, or else he who—"
He was thinking with vindictive relish of what fate he would mete out to the manipulator of the Bell, were it left to him to pass sentence. But he broke off as a body of soldiery burst from the tamarisks, and, headed by young Rowan, hurried toward the three, bringing with them a silent and unresisting prisoner.
"I say," the officer called excitedly in advance, "here's something uncommon' rum. It's a woman, you know."
"Aha!" said Labertouche, and "Ah!" said Amber, "with a click of his teeth, while the woman on his arm clung to him the closer.
"I thought we'd better bring her to you, for she said …" Rowan paused, embarrassed, and took a fresh start. "My men got to the ford just as she was coming ashore with three other men, and the whole pack took to cover on this side. Two of the men are still missing, but we routed out the other just now with this—ah—lady. He showed fight and got bayonetted. But the woman—excuse me, Mr. Amber—she protests—by George, it's too ridiculous!—"
"I have claimed naught that is not true!" an unforgettably sweet voice interrupted from the centre of the group. It opened out, disclosing Naraini between two guards, in that moment of passion and fear perhaps more incomparably beautiful than any woman they had ever looked upon, save her who held to Amber's arm, a-quiver with womanly sympathy and compassion.
During her flight and her resistance Naraini's veil had been rent away; in the clear starlight her countenance, framed in hair of lustrous jet and working with uncontrollable rage and despair, shone like that of some strange tempestuous Aphrodite fashioned of palest gold. Beneath its folds of tightly drawn, bespangled gauze her bosom swelled and fell convulsively, and on her perfect arms, more softly beautiful than any Phidias ever dreamed to chisel, the golden bracelets and bangles clashed and tinkled as she writhed and fought to free herself of the defiling hands. Half-mad with disappointment, she raged amid the scattered shreds of her dream of power like a woman hopelessly deranged.