"Come, dear witch, come," he at last urged her. "We still have more than a mile to go and a pretty stiff hill to climb. It grows late, you will be abominably tired to-morrow. Why this fascination for a passing steamer, probably some unromantic, villainously dirty old tramp too, you would not condescend to look at by daylight."
"Because,"—Damaris began. She came nearer to him, her expression strangely agitated.—"Oh! Colonel Sahib, if I could only be sure it wasn't treacherous to tell you!"
"Tell me what? One of the many things it would never occur to you to confide to Mrs. Frayling?" he said, trying to treat her evident emotion lightly, to laugh it off.
"To Henrietta? Of course not. It would be unpardonable, hateful to tell
Henrietta."
She flushed, her face looking, for the moment, dark from excess of colour.
"You are the only person I could possibly tell."
Carteret moved aside a few steps. He too felt strangely agitated. Wild ideas, ideas of unholy aspect, presented themselves to him—ideas, again, beyond words entrancing and sweet. He fought with both alike, honestly, manfully. Returned and took Damaris' hand quietly, gently in both his.
"Look here, dear witch," he said, "all this evening a—to me—unknown spirit has possessed you. You haven't been like yourself. You have made me a little anxious, a little alarmed on your account."
"Oh! it isn't only this evening," she caught him up. "It has been going on for weeks."
"So I have seen—and that is not good for you, isn't for your happiness. So, if I am—as you say—the only person you care to acquaint with this matter, had not you better tell me here and now? Better worry yourself no more with mysteries about it, but let us, once and for all, have the thing out?"