"Oh, I hope not! You will be all right in a few weeks," he assured her hopefully.
"Ah!" said she, "but he's got to be paid, you see, for what he did." She raised her uninjured arm and pointed to Bert, who turned scarlet as he stood awkwardly dandling his flowers. "Men don't help you for nothing; I've found out that much," she said, with biting intention.
"I am sure you do Mestaer injustice," said Mayne quietly. "No Englishman could possibly ask anything in return for the privilege of helping a woman."
"He says," said Millie, "that I promised to marry him the night he brought me here. I don't remember; but if I did, I got to do it, I s'pose."
"Certainly not!" was the emphatic reply. "Get rid of that idea. No man worthy of the name could hold you to a promise made under such circumstances. Besides, you are not free to marry for the next five years. Don't you want to go to England?"
The living blood flooded the white face with lovely colour; the eyes flashed fire.
"May I? Could I?" she gasped, half raising herself among her pillows, her face transformed with an energy, a desire for life, most strikingly at variance with her lethargy of a few minutes before. "Have they written? Do they want me?"
He drew a letter from his coat-pocket. "They have written, and they do want you," he said.
She sat quite up, unsupported. "Read it! Read it!"
Bert stood still as a stone, while Mayne unfolded a sheet of paper, written in a small, niggling, but cultivated hand, and read: