"Michel! You are incorrigible; and I have preached in vain! Besides, it is not a wife of my sort you need, I thought you found that out last year; and . . . I think so still. If not, why have you stayed on here? And why did you make that exquisite pastel of her portrait?"

Michael's eyes seemed to demand an answer from the accusing picture; and there was an instant of silence.

"I stayed on here," he said at length, "chiefly because, lacking you, I seem to lack initiative; and I painted that . . well, as a memento of my best bit of work, and of a dream, more delectable than most . . .

while it lasted; but none the less . . a dream."

"Yet you have seen a good deal of her this season, one way and another."

"Yes. In spite of the b.u.t.ton Quail!"

"And it would hurt you it she were to marry another man?"

Michael frowned. "There _is_ no other man, since Malcolm went home."

"Is there any man at all, I wonder?"

Michael rose abruptly, and going over to Elsie's portrait stood before it, his hands clasped behind him.

"I have wondered also," he said on a rare note of gravity. "But you women are enigmas; even the simplest of you."

"Ask her, Michel; ask her. Wondering is waste of time: and time is life. People so often forget that."

Maurice did not answer. But Quita was well content: for she saw how Elsie's violet-blue eyes were holding him, drawing him irresistibly back to the old allegiance. Yet, had she known it, Elsie's eyes had less to do with the matter than her own stimulating personality. The subtle development in her had not been without its effect on him. He saw her transfigured by the exquisite, self-effacing pa.s.sion of the woman; and found himself envying the man; though the eloquence of her appeal had, as usual, fired his imagination rather than his heart.

Suddenly he swung round upon her, his face alight.

"_Parbleu_, Quita, but you are right! You always are. And as there's no time like now, I'll ask her to-day . . I have scarcely seen her this last fortnight. But that shall be atoned for . . later. Give me your blessing, _ma belle_!"

Half-seriously, half in joke, he knelt beside her chair. But the entrance of the kitmutgar with a note brought him swiftly to his feet.

"Talk of an angel! It is herself," he exclaimed as he broke the seal.

"My demure little Puritan meets me half-way after all!"

He scanned the first page at a glance, then, with a sound between a laugh and a curse, crumpled up the paper in his hand.

"_Mon Dieu_ . . a pretty bit of comedy!"

"What is it now, _mon cher_?" Quita asked anxiously, guessing his answer.

"It is Malcolm; no less. He reaps the reward of constancy; like the good boy in a Sunday-school book! And she . . _eh bien_, she is quite certain I shall be delighted to hear of her great good fortune. Very charming! Very correct!"

"And you, Michel . . _you_?"

He shrugged his shoulders, and tossed the note into the fender.

"_Comme ca_! It seems I am a negligible quant.i.ty. Possibly have been all along. The notion does not comfort a man's natural vanity. But on the whole . ." he paused; smiling at the concern in Quita's eyes, "on the whole, _pet.i.te soeur_ . . . I am profoundly relieved! I should have proposed . . yes; and enjoyed a few weeks of Elysium. But it is certain I should never have delivered myself permanently into the hands of a woman! After that, it u useless to ask for your blessing, _n'est ce pas_?"

"Quite useless!"

But the hands stretched out to him belied her words; and as he knelt beside her once more, she set them upon his shoulders and kissed his forehead.

"This time I give you up for good, Michel!" she said, smiling. "At least I have done my level best for you; so my conscience is clear.

But it is written that 'no man may redeem his brother'; and I might have known that Providence was not likely to make an exception in favour of a woman!"

"Is it perhaps a step towards redemption if, on your account, I give up playing with the _feu sacre_ of the heart, and confine myself to the only form of it that the G.o.ds appear to have granted me?"

"_Dieu vous garde_," she whispered, and kissed him again.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

"I have my lesson; understand The worth of flesh and blood at last."

--Browning.

"Oh, Theo--it is too cruel. Too terrible! What on earth is one to tell her?"

"Anything but the truth," Desmond answered decisively, his gaze reverting to the telegram in his hand. It was from the Resident of Kashmir; bald and brief, yet full of grim possibilities.

"Captain Lenox dangerously ill at Darkot. Rheumatic fever. Doctor sent out. Will wire further news. Writing."

Desmond read and re-read the words mechanically, an anxious frown between his brows. Then, looking up again, he encountered his wife's eyes, heavy with tears; and his arm enfolded her on the instant.

"Bear up, my darling, like the plucky woman you are," he commanded gently, his lips against her cheek. "It's not the worst. By G.o.d's mercy we may get him back yet. You must keep on upholding her a little longer; that's all. I know it has been a strain for you,--this last fortnight; so soon after your own affair too."

For they themselves had been enriched by a new life, a new link in the chain that bound them--a bright-haired daughter not yet four months old.

Honor did not answer at once; but leaned upon him, choking back her sobs, soothed by the magnetism of his hand and voice, that seemed always to leave things better than they found them.

When her tears were under control, she drew herself up, brushing them from her cheeks and lashes.

"Yes, it has been a strain," she admitted. "And I did so hope this had brought news I could give her, at last. You don't see her as I do, Theo, lying there day after day, so frail and white and patient. Quita patient! Can you picture it? I quite long for a flash of her old perversity. She has almost left off speaking of him. But the eternal question in her eyes haunts me; and I feel half ashamed of my golden time with you, when I see her going through it alone, poor darling; her natural joy in the child shadowed and broken by the anxiety and longing that are eating her heart out, and holding her back from health. Is there nothing I can tell her, that would be truth, yet not all the truth?"

Desmond knitted his brows again, pondering.

"Go to her now," he said. "Tell her we've heard by wire that he is safely over the Darkot, but he may be delayed in getting on to Kashmir, and we hope for more news within the week. If she asks to see the wire, say you're sorry, but I tore it up."

He did so on the spot, dropping the shreds of paper reflectively among the smouldering logs upon the hearth; while Honor hurried to the sick-room, with her fragment of news: the room in which Lenox had almost died of cholera, and in which Quita's ring had been restored to her finger sixteen months before.

She lay in it now, propped up among frilled pillows, an etherealised edition of herself; her hair divided into two plaits, one lying over each shoulder; the sweeping curve of her lashes shadowing her cheek; her eyes resting on a small dark head that nestled in the hollow of her arm. For, to Quita's intense satisfaction, the child had Eldred's black hair, and the clear Northern eyes that held all she knew, or as yet cared to know, of heaven.

Her delight at the inadequate tidings of her husband was greater than Honor had dared to expect. For she could not know how the wakeful night watches, and the hours of enforced quiet, had been haunted by that nightmare dread of the mountains, which Eldred's expurgated accounts of certain vicissitudes had justified rather than dispelled.

But now--now he was through the worst of them, within easy distance of Kashmir; and she felt as a prisoner may feel when the doors swing wide, and he finds himself once more lord of light and s.p.a.ce.