Muriel's dark eyes flashed swift entreaty. "Oh, don't say it! Don't think it! I believe it would kill her."

"She is stronger, though?" he questioned almost sharply.

"Yes, yes, much stronger. Only--not strong enough for that. Captain Grange, it simply couldn't happen."

They had reached a gate at the end of the field. Grange stopped before it, and spoke with sudden, deep feeling.

"If it does happen, Muriel," he said, using her Christian name quite unconsciously, "we shall have to stand by her, you and I. You won't leave her, will you? You would be of more use to her than I. Oh, it's--it's d.a.m.nable to see a woman in trouble and not be able to comfort her."

He brought his ungloved hand down upon the gate-post with a violence that drew blood; then, seeing her face of amazement, thrust it hastily behind him.

"I'm a fool," he said, with his shy, semi-apologetic smile. "Don't mind me, Miss Roscoe. You know, I--I'm awfully fond of Daisy, always was. My people were her people, and when they died we were the only two left, as it were. Of course she was married by that time, and there are some other relations somewhere. But we've always hung together, she and I. You can understand it, can't you?"

Muriel fancied she could, but his vehemence startled her none the less. She had not deemed him capable of such intensity.

"I suppose you feel almost as if she were your sister," she remarked, groping half-unconsciously for an explanation.

Grange was holding the gate open for her. He did not instantly reply.

Then, "I don't exactly know what that feels like," he said, with an odd shame-facedness. "But in so far as that we have been playfellows and chums all our lives, I suppose you might describe it in that way."

And Muriel, though she wondered a little at the laborious honesty of his reply, was satisfied that she understood.

She was drifting into a very pleasant friendship with Blake Grange.

He seemed to rely upon her in an indefinable fashion that made their intercourse of necessity one of intimacy. Moreover, Daisy's habits were still more or less those of an invalid, and this fact helped very materially to throw them together.

To Muriel, emerging slowly from the long winter of her sorrow, the growing friendship with this man whom she both liked and admired was as a shaft of sunshine breaking across a grey landscape. Insensibly it was doing her good. The deep shadow of a horror that once had overwhelmed her was lifting gradually away from her life. In her happier moments it almost seemed that she was beginning to forget.

Grange's suggestion that they should ride together awoke in her a keener sense of pleasure than she had known since the tragedy of Wara had darkened her young life, and for the rest of the day she looked forward eagerly to the resumption of this her favourite exercise.

Daisy was delighted with the idea, and when on the following morning Grange ransacked the town for suitable mounts and returned triumphant, she declared gaily that she should take no further trouble for her guest's entertainment. The responsibility from that day forth rested with Muriel.

Muriel was by no means loth to a.s.sume it. They got on excellently together, and their almost daily rides became a source of keen pleasure to her. Winter was fast merging into spring, and the magic of the coming season was working in her blood. There were times when a sense of spontaneous happiness would come over her, she knew not wherefore. Jim Ratcliffe no longer looked at her with stern-browed disapproval.

She and Grange both became regular members of Olga's hockey team. They shared most of their pursuits. Among other things she was learning the accompaniments of his songs. Grange had a well-cultivated tenor voice, to which Daisy the restless would listen for any length of time.

Altogether they were a very peaceful trio, and as the weeks slipped on it almost seemed as if the quiet home life they lived were destined to endure indefinitely. Grange spoke occasionally of leaving, but Daisy would never entertain the idea for an instant, and he certainly did not press it very strongly. He was not returning to India before September, and the long summer months that intervened made the date of his departure so remote as to be outside discussion. No one ever thought of it.

But the long, quiet interval in the sleepy little country town, interminable as it might feel, was not destined to last for ever. On a certain afternoon in March, Grange and Muriel, riding home together after a windy gallop across open country, were waylaid outside the doctor's gate by one of the Ratcliffe boys.

The urchin was cheering at the top of his voice and dancing ecstatically in the mud. Olga, equally dishevelled but somewhat more coherent, was seated on the gate-post, her long legs dangling.

"Have you seen Dad? Have you heard?" was her cry. "Jimmy, come out of the road. You'll be kicked."

Both riders pulled up to hear the news, Jimmy squirming away from the horses' legs after a fashion that provoked even the mild-tempered Grange to a sharp reproof.

"You haven't heard?" pursued Olga, ignoring her small brother's escapade as too trifling to notice at such a supreme moment. "But you haven't, of course, if you haven't seen Dad. The letter only came an hour ago. It's Nick, dear old Nick! He's coming home at last!" In her delight over imparting the information Olga nearly toppled over backwards, only saving herself by a violent effort. "Aren't you glad, Muriel? Aren't you glad?" she cried. "I was never so pleased in my life!"

But Muriel had no reply ready. For some reason her animal had become suddenly restive, and occupied the whole of her attention.

It was Grange who after a seconds hesitation asked for further particulars. "What is he coming for? Is it sick leave?"

Olga nodded. "He isn't to stay out there for the hot weather. It's something to do with his wound. He doesn't want to come a bit. But he is to start almost at once. He may be starting now."

"Not likely," put in Jimmy. "The end of March was what he said. Dad said he couldn't be here before the third week in April."

"Oh, well, that isn't long, is it?" said Olga eagerly. "Not when you come to remember that it's three years since he went away. I do think they might have given him the V.C., don't you? Captain Grange, why hasn't he got the V.C.?"

Grange couldn't say, really. He advised her to ask the man himself.

He was observing Muriel with some uneasiness, and when she at length abruptly waved her whip and rode sharply on as though her horse were beyond her control, he struck spurs into his own and started in pursuit.

Muriel pa.s.sed her own gate at a canter, but hearing Grange behind her she soon reined in, and they trotted some distance side by side in silence.

But Grange was still uneasy. The girl's rigid profile had that stony, aloof look that he had noted upon his arrival weeks before, and that he had come to a.s.sociate with her escape from Wara.

Nevertheless, when she presently addressed him it was in her ordinary tone and upon a subject indifferent to them both. She had received a shock, he knew, but she plainly did not wish him to remark it.

They rode quite soberly back again, and separated at the door.

CHAPTER XXI

A HARBOUR OF REFUGE

To Daisy the news that Grange imparted was more pleasing than startling. "I knew he would come before long if he were a wise man,"

she said.

But when her cousin wanted to know what she meant, she would not tell him.

"No, I can't, Blake," was her answer. "I once promised Muriel never to speak of it. She is very sensitive on the subject."

Grange did not press for an explanation. It was not his way. He left her moodily, a frown of deep dissatisfaction upon his handsome face.

Daisy did not spend much thought upon him. Her interests at that time were almost wholly centred upon her boy who was so backward and delicate that she was continually anxious about him. She was, in fact, so preoccupied that she hardly noticed at dinner that Muriel scarcely spoke and ate next to nothing.

Grange remarked both facts, and his moodiness increased. When Daisy went up to the nursery, he at once followed Muriel into the drawing-room. She was standing by the window when he entered, a slim, straight figure in unrelieved black; but though she must have heard him, she neither spoke nor turned her head.

Grange closed the door and came softly forward. There was an unwonted air of resolution about him that made him look almost grim. He reached her side and stood there silently. The wind had fallen, and the sky was starry.

After a brief silence Muriel dropped the blind and looked at him.

There was something of interrogation in her glance.

"Shall we go into the garden?" she suggested. "It is so warm."

He fell in at once with the proposal. "You will want a cloak," he said. "Can I fetch you one?"