He did not repeat his inquiry. Something in her appearance checked him. All that Moreton had said about her came into his mind with almost startling force. How clearly he felt now the dryad-like strength of her figure, and the infantile purity of her face. She had the soul of a woman, too, for how tenderly she had nursed him.
"Get me my slippers, please, Milly," he presently said, more to break up the situation than with a desire to be served.
She let fall her hands and sprang to obey him, with the noiseless swiftness of a kitten. She fetched his slippers, and also his dressing gown, from a corner of the room. This done she lingered near him for awhile, as if hoping he might need some further help. She would not look straight at him now, but kept her face half turned away, glancing sidewise under her drooping eyelids, one hand fluttering idly about the kerchief at her throat.
Some one lifted the latch of the door leading to the room in which White and his wife were smoking. At the first click Milly darted noiselessly into the kitchen. It was White, who hesitatingly thrust his head past the door-post and said:
"I loaded three hunderd carterges fur the twelve-bore gun."
"Load a hundred for the twenty-gauge, if you please," said Reynolds, "two and a half drams of powder and three-quarters of an ounce of number eight shot. Put two wads on the powder, don't forget."
"All right, sir, I air 'quainted wuth jest what ye want. Them shells'll be fixed up jest to the dot. Ye orter see them air dogs, they shine same like they'd ben 'iled."
"Thank you, I'm glad of that. Good night," said Reynolds, anxious to get back to his thoughts.
White withdrew his head.
Milly, from the shadows of the kitchen, gazed fixedly at Reynolds, as he stood in the mellow light of the lamp.