"A girl like that! So utterly unfit for camp life!" he went on. "It's such a responsibility, and that ass of a brother of hers is such a bore too."
"Can't you wire to them that you don't want them?"
Everest laughed his amused, easy laugh.
"Well, it's a little awkward! Besides, it won't make much difference to Miss Sybil if she intends to come."
Regina rose with a swift, sudden movement from her chair, and came over to his. Her face looked white in the warm light, her mouth had a resolution in its lines that Everest had never seen before.
"You have been perfectly content and happy all this time, haven't you?" she asked. "You don't want or need anybody else? You have no personal wish that these people should come?"
"Not a bit," he answered, looking up at her with a smile. "I think they would be a great bore. We are absolutely happy alone, and so we shall be in camp. We don't want anybody."
"Then wire you won't have them: that they can't come." She spoke with unusual decision for her, in talking with him. Generally it was her pleasure to give way to him in everything. In fact she cared about nothing so long as he was pleased. But now, this was important: there was danger ahead to her happiness, and she rose to defend it, as a lioness to defend her cub.
"I think this is the first thing I have asked of you," she added, as he hesitated: "to send this wire."
Everest clasped both his arms round the slim, supple waist, as she stood by him.