"Good-night," he said, and his voice was suddenly grave. "I hope your dreams will be sweet."
She sighed—a sigh of happiness, and she looked down at the burning taper in her hand.
"Then they will have to be of you."
She did not speak for a moment; afterwards she lifted her eyes from the burning taper and looked into his.
"I love you," she said again, and she repeated the words over and over as a master plays over and over a bar of sweetest music, and she put out her hand and pressed her fingers against his cheek. They rested there—closely—for a minute. "I love you so!"
Then she gathered up her long silk skirts and began slowly to mount the stairs, the taper lifted carefully before her. She did not look back, but he could see her face, even in the shadow of the grim armor, by its light. And on her white face there rested a perfect peace. Once a draught caught the flickering taper and nearly extinguished it. She stopped and, dropping her long skirts that fell back upon the oaken stairs with a silken rustle, she shielded the taper with her hand. So would she shield the light of her pure life and her wifehood from the world's breath, he thought.
He stood leaning against the bannister, watching her until she vanished, and he stood there after the soft silken rustle of her skirts and her faint footfall were lost, staring at the last turn in the stairs.
And in western Scotland, Trevelyan sat, his head bowed upon the letter he had just finished to Cary.
XII.
It was spring before Trevelyan could push forward into the lowland section, and on to the interior and Mackenzie. The reports of a threatened cholera scare had reached down as far as Patna. There were Britons coming every day from farther inland to Patna, grateful enough for the privilege of having passed the government line of precaution, and being allowed to stay there; but a British subject, who was neither ordered there by command of the War or Colonial Offices, was another matter, and Trevelyan was regarded with a blank curiosity by those who knew his proposed destination.