“No—don’t! Geoffrey might be there——”
“So much the better”—grimly. “I’d like five minutes with him.” Tormarin’s hand tightened fiercely on the hunting-crop he carried. “But he’s more likely lost his way in the mist and fetched up far enough away. Probably”—with a short laugh—“he’s still searching Dartmoor for! you. You’d be on his mind a bit, you know! Wait here a minute while I ride up to the bungalow——”
But she clung to his arm.
“No, no! Don’t go! I—I can’t be left alone—again.” The fear was coming back to her voice and Blaise, detecting it, abandoned the idea at once.
“All right, little Jean,” he said reassuringly. “I won’t leave you. Put my coat round you”—stripping it off. “There—like that.” He helped her into it and fastened it with deft fingers. “And now I’m going to get you up on to Orion and we’ll go home.”
“I shall never get up there,” she observed, with a glance at the roan’s great shoulders looming through the mist. “I shan’t be able to spring—I can only stand on one foot, remember.”
Blaise laughed cheerily.
“Don’t worry. Just remain quite still—standing on your one foot, you poor little lame duck!—and I’ll do the rest.”
She felt his arm release its clasp of her, and a moment later he had swung his leg across the horse and was back in the saddle again. With a word to the big beast he dropped the reins on to his neck and, turning towards Jean, where she stood like a slim, pale ghost in the moonlight, he leaned down to her from the saddle.
“Can you manage to come a step nearer?” he asked.