"Do you want me?" asked the stranger, with a new interest, and still smiling. Constance found herself wondering if the smile were not cultivated to hide that faintly caught suggestion of the bird of prey. But the question restored her mental poise.
"Only to say that Mr. Pyne—" she began.
"Charlie! Is he saved?"
Mrs. Vansittart certainly had the faculty of betraying intense interest. The girl attributed the nervous start, the quick color which tinged the white cheeks, to the natural anxiety of a woman who stood in such approximate degree of kin to the young American.
"Oh, yes," said the girl, with ready sympathy. "Don't you know that all of you owe your lives to his daring? He asked me to—to say he was all right, and—that he hoped you were not utterly collapsed."
The addendum was a kindly one. No doubt, Mr. Pyne had meant her to convey such a message. Mrs. Vansittart, it was evident, had received a shock. Perhaps she was a timorous, shrinking woman, averse to the sudden stare of others.
"I know nothing," she murmured. "It was all so horrible. Oh, God! shall I ever forget that scene in the saloon. How the people fought. They were not human. They were tigers, fierce tigers, with the howls and the baleful eyes of wild beasts."
This outburst was as unexpected as her staccato question. Constance bent over her and placed a gentle hand on her forehead.
"You must try to forget all that," she said, soothingly. "Indeed, it must have been very terrible. It was dreadful enough for us, looking down at things through a mist of foam. For you—But there! You are one of the few who escaped. That is everything. God has been very good to you!"
She was stooping low and holding the lantern in her left hand.