"Why—why did you let them go?" he cried sharply.
"You wish I had revealed myself?" she asked with compunction, misunderstanding his question. "You think I ought to have brought them up here?"
"That was for yourself to decide," he answered quietly, adding with a little laugh. "I am well content with things as they are. But I am curious to know why you let deliverance from the hardships of this situation pass by on the other side."
"Oh," replied Helen in some confusion, "I remembered that you did not like Gerald Ainley!"
"But," he protested, "there was yourself to think of."
"Yes," was the reply, given with laughter, "and I was doing so—if you only knew it."
"How? I cannot see it."
"You forget my pride as amateur surgeon and nurse," she retorted. "I like to see the end of things that I begin, and if I had brought Mr. Ainley up here he would have wanted to take me away, and leave you with the Indian." She broke off, and looked at him with a gay smile. "Perhaps you would have preferred——"
"No! No!" he interrupted protestingly.
"And there is another reason—quite as selfish as the last. You see, Mr. Stane, I have been delicately reared; boarding-school, Newnham—the usual round you know! London in the season, Scotland in the autumn, and the shires for the hunting months. It is an inane sort of life, as I have always felt, pleasant enough at first, but inane for all that, and after a time rather a bore. Can you understand that?"