“Major Keeling, I ask you—I entreat you—to do nothing. It is my own fault. Elma Haigh warned me against Captain Ferrers, and if I had listened to her, I should never have renewed my promise. But it is given, and I must keep it. One can’t wriggle out of a promise because it turns out to be hard to keep. You would not do it yourself; why should you think I would?”
He took her hand and held it between his. “Do you ask me,” he said slowly, “to stand by, and see you give yourself to a man who at his best is well meaning, but generally isn’t even that? It’s not as if you cared for him. You might manage to be happy somehow if you did, but as it is——”
“Don’t make it harder for me,” entreated Penelope.
“Am I doing that? Heaven knows I don’t want to, unless I could make it so hard you couldn’t do it. Why, it’s preposterous!” he broke out again. “That you should feel bound to sacrifice yourself——”
“Is a promise a sacred thing to you? You know it is. So it is to me. I must keep it, but you can make it much harder to do.”
“I will do anything in the world that will help you.”
“Then please go away, and never speak of this again.” Penelope’s strength was exhausted. In another moment she must break down, she knew, and if he pleaded with her again, how could she resist him? He seemed about to protest, but after one look at her face, he dropped her hand and went out. She moved to the window, and watched him between the slats of the blind as he mounted Miani and rode away. Would he ride out into the desert, she wondered, and try to rid himself of his grief in the old way? But no, he turned in that direction at first, but almost immediately took the road to the town again. If he were absent from the dinner-party that night, she might be questioned, as the person who had seen him last, and he must do nothing that might reflect on her. He rode to his own house, and going into his private office, sat down resolutely at his desk and pulled out paper and ink. He had been promising himself a controversy with no less a person than the Governor-General, a fiery, indomitable little man of a type of character not unlike his own. Lord Blairgowrie had observed, in a moment of irritation, that every frontier officer in India was a Governor-General in his own estimation, and would have to be taught his mistake, whether he were Major Keeling, C.B., or the latest arrived subaltern. An injudicious friend—he possessed a good many of these—had passed on the remark to Major Keeling, who had been prepared to resent it in his usual style. But on this occasion he got no further than writing, “To the Right Honourable the Earl of Blairgowrie. My Lord——” It was no use. The caustic words he had been turning over in his mind would not come. His thoughts were running on a very different subject, and he pushed away the pen and paper, and buried his face in his hands.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE DIE IS CAST.
How long Penelope sat in the drawing-room, staring with stony eyes straight before her, after Major Keeling had gone out, she did not know, but she was roused at last by hearing another horseman ride into the courtyard, and walk across the verandah with clinking spurs. She could not face any one just now, whoever it might be, and she ran to the door, intending to take refuge in her own room, but found herself confronted by Ferrers, who broke into a cheerful laugh.
“Just the person I wanted!” he cried. “Now, don’t run away.”