"Father Brochet married us," Desirée went on stonily. "It was in the evening. At once we fled from Oxford House, the sentry thinking we were only taking a turn on the lake with the dogs. But in the forest a Nor'west guide from Brondel met us with another sledge as agreed, and the flight began in earnest. The Nor'wester had rum with him. I rode on one sledge. The thing I had married rode on the other, gulping down the rum. You can imagine what happened!"
"Ah!" breathed Dunvegan pityingly.
"When we made camp near dawn he was drunk! He rolled off the sled, while the Nor'wester built a fire, in order to greet his bride——"
Bruce's smothered oath interrupted.
"What?" Desirée asked.
"Nothing," he murmured, the veins of his neck swelling and nearly choking him.
"Instead," Desirée resumed, "he greeted my pistol muzzle. Day and night since he has greeted it also."
Struck with the lightning significance of her speech, Bruce Dunvegan leaped across the intervening floor space. Like some cherished possession of his own he snatched her palms. "Desirée! Desirée!" he panted.
The danger note was in his voice, the danger fire in his look. Recklessly she met the sweet menace. Facing each other for a long minute, secret thoughts were read to the full.
"Yet you are married to him," breathed Dunvegan.