“I call it beastly unfair, the way I am done out of everything!” she heard Fitz grumble at last. “When you had that jolly row in the Mission courtyard round the flagstaff, I had to stay in and guard the house, and that other time when I wanted to go to the Palace you wouldn’t let me. And now you mean to keep me here, while North uses my horse and my way out of this place, though I’m the only one of you that didn’t manage to get shut up here.”
“And you managed that by desertion and disobedience to orders,” said Stratford, impatiently, for he had succeeded by this time in extracting from Ismail Bakhsh the particulars of Fitz’s mysterious disappearance. “Try not to be more of a fool than you can help, young Anstruther. We can’t risk the honour of the country and the fate of the Mission on the hope that you may chance to act sensibly for once.”
“I say that it is my right to go, Mr Stratford,” returned Fitz, doggedly; but Dick broke through the group, and came to Georgia.
“Shall I go, Georgie?”
“Oh, Dick, must I decide for you?”
“You have a right to do it, I think. At any rate, right or no right, I am not going if you ask me not to. I put myself in your hands, Georgie, and the treaty and everything else may slide if you tell me to stay here. What good would it all be to me if—if anything happened to you while I was gone?”
He spoke hoarsely, his words tumbling over one another, and Georgia felt that the hands which clasped hers were hot and shaking. She looked at him in amazement which was almost terror. Was it possible that in some ways she was stronger than he was—that he was confessedly looking to her for the strength which should enable him to tear himself away from her?
“It is an awfully risky thing, Miss Keeling,” said Stratford, interposing with an honest determination to let Georgia know the worst before she made her decision. “He takes his life in his hand if he goes. I am sure no one could wonder at your keeping him back. In fact, under the circumstances, I should think it quite probable that no one would expect him to leave you here and ride off to Rahmat-Ullah to save the treaty.”
“If I were not here,” said Georgia, “would you think it right for him to go?”
“Well, things would be different then, you see—and really this is such an important business——”