That afternoon, during the progress of a hybrid gymkhana,—ranging from steeplechasing to obstacle races for men and natives,—the first whisper of current gossip reached Lenox's ears.
Standing behind a restless row of hats and parasols, he was watching with some interest the preliminary canter of a horse he had backed heavily, when Garth and Quita, deep in animated talk, passed across the line of chairs, and a woman close to Lenox turned to her neighbour.
"That match is a certainty, Mrs Mayhew. Say what you like. I'm sure of it. I only wonder it hasn't been given out before now."
Mrs Mayhew shifted her parasol and inspected the retreating pair through her gold-rimmed pince-nez, as though, by examining their shoulder-blades, she could determine the exact state of their hearts.
"I don't quite know what to think," she remarked with judicial emphasis. "I don't believe anything is a certainty where Major Garth is concerned. But if they are not engaged they ought to be! I don't like that girl, though. She is much too independent for my taste; and engagement or no, she probably lets Major Garth make love to her. He would never have stuck to her for six months otherwise."
On the last words Lenox started as it a cold finger-tip had touched his heart. Such a thought had never occurred to him: and he could have murdered, without compunction, the small self-satisfied woman who had lodged the poisoned shaft in his mind.
Turning on his heel, he made straight for his tent, where a littered camp-table gave proof that the art of taking a holiday could not be reckoned among his accomplishments. Then he sat down by it and bowed his head upon his hands. To doubt his wife's integrity was rank insult. Yet he knew Garth's evil reputation; knew also that the suggestion would cling to his memory like a limpet, and torture him in the endless hours of wakefulness from which there was now no way of escape.
Enforced abstinence from tobacco and stimulants had told severely upon his nerves, appetite, and health; and a foretaste of the sleepless night ahead of him tempted him to regret his hasty destruction of the bottle of chlorodyne, which had not been replaced.
Till dusk he worked without intermission; and, as if by a fiendish nicety of calculation, the evening mail-bag,—brought out by runner from Dalhousie,—contained the coveted parcel of tobacco, whose arrival he had alternately craved and dreaded throughout the past ten days.
Zyarulla set it before him with manifest satisfaction.