“Oh, didn’t you? but you see I have a right to give it; and I tell you plainly I don’t wish you to make an intimate friend of Keeling.”
“Even supposing that you had such a right, I should never think of bowing to it unless I knew your reasons.”
“Do you really wish me to give them? I thought you might prefer to go on believing in your friend.”
“I wish to hear the worst you can say of him, and I shall go on believing in him just the same.”
“Will you? I think not. What would you say if I told you I had seen him, a week ago last night, playing imam at a pir’s tomb out near the Akrab—reciting prayers, writing charms, pretending to work miracles, and all the rest of it?”
“A week ago last night?” said Penelope faintly. Then she pulled herself together. “I should say you had been mistaken.”
“Mistaken? Am I not to believe the witness of my own eyes?”
“I would not believe the witness of my own eyes in such a case.”
Ferrers wondered at the decision with which she spoke, not knowing what was in her mind. On the night he mentioned, she had remembered, while lying awake, that she had left the book she was reading—one of Sir Dugald’s—on the ramparts. Fearing it would be spoilt by the dew, she roused her ayah and told her to go and fetch it, but the woman whimpered that she was afraid—there were always ghosts in these old forts—and hung back even when Penelope said she would come too. They reached the rampart safely, however, the clear starlight making a lamp unnecessary, and rescued the book. As they turned to descend the steps again, the pad of a horse’s feet upon the sand reached their ears, and looking over the parapet, they saw Major Keeling ride past on Miani. There was no possibility of mistake, and Penelope had never dreamt of imagining that the rider in undress uniform and curtained forage-cap could be any one but the Commandant. He was bound on one of his restless wanderings over the desert, and her heart sent forth a silent entreaty to him to be prudent. But now, as she said, she was willing to disbelieve the evidence of her own eyes if it gave support to this story of Ferrers’.
“I suppose you think I am a liar?” he demanded resentfully.