“Interested!” She laughed shortly. “It is rather interesting to hear that after six months of this”—she made a quick comprehensive gesture with her hand—“one will have some one to speak to—some one. It is the hand of Providence; it comes just in time to save me from—” She checked herself abruptly.
He sat staring up at her stupidly, without a word.
“It’s all right, John,” she said, with a quick change of tone, gathering up her work quietly as she spoke. “I’m not mad—yet. You—you must get used to these little outbreaks,” she added, after a moment, smiling faintly; “and, to do me justice, I don’t often trouble you with them, do I? I’m just a little tired, or it’s the heat or—something. No—don’t touch me!” she cried, shrinking back; for he had risen slowly and was coming toward her.
She had lost command over her voice, and the shrill note of horror in it was unmistakable. The man heard it, and shrank in his turn.
“I’m so sorry, John,” she murmured, raising her great bright eyes to his face. They had not lost their goaded expression, though they were full of tears. “I’m awfully sorry; but I’m just nervous and stupid, and I can’t bear any one to touch me when I’m nervous.”
“Here’s Broomhurst, my dear! I made a mistake in his name after all, I find. I told you Brookfield, I believe, didn’t I? Well, it isn’t Brookfield, he says; it’s Broomhurst.”
Mrs. Drayton had walked some little distance across the plain to meet and welcome the expected guest. She stood quietly waiting while her husband stammered over his incoherent sentences, and then put out her hand.
“We are very glad to see you,” she said, with a quick glance at the new-comer’s face as she spoke.
As they walked together toward the tent, after the first greetings, she felt his keen eyes upon her before he turned to her husband.
“I’m afraid Mrs. Drayton finds the climate trying?” he asked. “Perhaps she ought not to have come so far in this heat?”