“And that?”
“Looking down upon the source of the Nile.”
“And that lonely quiet-looking one?”
“He watches the North Pole, and has no less than the whole equator for his horizon. And that idle one low down upon the ground, that we have almost rolled away from, is in India—over the head of a young friend of mine, who very possibly looks at the star in our zenith, as it hangs low upon his horizon, and thinks of it as marking where his true love dwells.”
Elfride glanced at Knight with misgiving. Did he mean her? She could not see his features; but his attitude seemed to show unconsciousness.
“The star is over MY head,” she said with hesitation.
“Or anybody else’s in England.”
“Oh yes, I see:” she breathed her relief.
“His parents, I believe, are natives of this county. I don’t know them, though I have been in correspondence with him for many years till lately. Fortunately or unfortunately for him he fell in love, and then went to Bombay. Since that time I have heard very little of him.”
Knight went no further in his volunteered statement, and though Elfride at one moment was inclined to profit by the lessons in honesty he had just been giving her, the flesh was weak, and the intention dispersed into silence. There seemed a reproach in Knight’s blind words, and yet she was not able to clearly define any disloyalty that she had been guilty of.