“How horrid that it should come just to-day!” said Mabel snappishly. “I told Mr Anstruther I was tired of riding Simorgh, and he must really bring Laili back. He said he couldn’t be sure she was cured yet, and I told him he might use a leading-rein if he liked, but that I meant to ride her. We weren’t going at all near the frontier, or anywhere in the direction of Dera Gul.”
“My beloved Mab, dust-storms don’t respect British territory, and if you had once been out in one you wouldn’t wish to repeat the experience, even if you were in a position to do it. Go and take your habit off, and when Mr Anstruther comes, I will tell him to send the horses to the stables, and wait here until the storm is over. Then you will have some one to talk to. See that the servants shut all your windows.”
But when Mabel emerged again from her darkened room into the lighted hall, the disappointment caused by the loss of her ride was mingled with a certain amount of ill-humour, due to an even more untoward occurrence. The ayah Tara had chosen this particular morning for passing in review all her mistress’s best gowns and hats, with an eye to any little repairs that might be necessary, and having taken the garments from their respective boxes and spread them out all over the room, had sat down to contemplate them for a while before setting to work. She was not accustomed to the peculiarities of the Khemistan climate, and the gathering darkness appeared to her only as the precursor of a thunderstorm. Hence, when the first gust of raging wind whirled a cloud of gritty dust through the open windows, she was as much astonished as Mabel herself, who was entering the room at the moment, and was almost knocked down. Both mistress and maid flew at once to shut the windows, but in the wind and darkness this was by no means an easy task, and before it could be accomplished the dust lay thick all over the room and its contents. Such a contretemps was enough to provoke a saint, Mabel said to herself angrily, when she had left the weeping Tara to do what she could to repair the mischief, and it would be idle to deny that she was feeling very cross indeed as she entered the drawing-room with a bundle of letters in her hand.
The shutters were closed and the lamps lighted as if it were night, and the dust pattered like hail on the verandah whenever the howling of the wind would allow any other sound to be heard. Fitz Anstruther was sitting near the fireplace, looking through an old magazine, and Mabel, rejecting his suggestion of a game of chess, seated herself at the writing-table, saying that she must finish her letters for the mail. She found it difficult to write, however, for although she would not look up, she could not help being conscious that her companion’s eyes were much oftener fixed on her than on the printed page before him. Accustomed though she was to such homage from men, this time it made her nervous, and at last she could bear it no longer.
“Wouldn’t you like something to do?” she demanded suddenly, turning round and catching him in the act of looking at her, but he was equal to the occasion.
“Something to do? Something for you, do you mean? May I really write your letters for you? I’m sure the Major has given me plenty of practice in that sort of thing, and your friends would be so surprised to find you had set up a private secretary.”
“Thanks, but I don’t seem to be in the mood for letter-writing, and certainly not for dictating.”
“Then may I hold a skein of silk for you to wind? That’s the sort of thing they set a mere man down to in books.”
“I don’t use silk of that sort. Is there nothing you would like to do?”
“Yes, awfully. I should like to talk to you.”