For a second Garth looked up at the man who stood beside her; but only for a second. For in the Scotchman's eye hate gleamed like a naked sword; and Garth had small taste for bared weapons of any kind.
"Ah, mon pauvre Michel!" Quita exclaimed, in a quick rush of tenderness, as her brother half ran to her, white and panting, both hands outstretched: and deserting Lenox, she flew to him, anathematising her own folly in a rapid flow of French. "Take me to my tent now," she concluded, linking her arm in his. "I still feel idiotically shaky, and I am certainly no loss to my side!—Mr Bathurst"—she turned in Jeff's direction—"please forgive me. I promise I'll never ask you to lend me a polo pony again!"
Bathurst,—who had rescued his treasure, and was feeling him all over with skilled hands,—shouted a cheery: "Don't mention it, Miss Maurice. Always glad to oblige a lady!"
And with a tired smile she turned back to Michael.
"Viens, mon cher," she said gently; and he led her away.
Conscious of Garth's eyes on her face, she could not trust herself to look again at Lenox, who had neither moved nor spoken since he set her on dry ground. But that one moment in his arms had solved her problem in a fashion that she dreamed not of: a fashion that still seemed past belief. She knew now that she had never lost him; and her heart sang a Jubilate Deo all the way to her tent. But she knew also that his pride equalled hers; that the first move was 'up to her'; and that now, at last, she might make it without fear of rebuff. But how—how?
Ten minutes later Maurice left her prostrate, in the twilight of her tent;—eau de cologne on her temples, and a chaos of mixed emotions at her heart.
CHAPTER XII.
"How the world seems made for each of us;
How all we perceive and know in it
Tends to some moment's product,—thus,
When the soul declares itself; to wit,
By its fruit: the thing it does."
—Browning.
Quita lacked courage to appear again in public till the dinner bugle sounded. Garth was her promised partner: and she found him awaiting her just outside her tent.