But it was too late. That unguarded look of hers had betrayed her, rending asunder in an instant the veil with which for years she had successfully baffled him.

In a second he was on his knees beside her, his arms about her, holding her with a close and pa.s.sionate insistence.

"Daisy!" he whispered huskily. And again, "Daisy!"

And Daisy turned with a sudden deep sob and hid her face upon his breast.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE EAGLE CAGED

In spite of Olga's ecstatic welcome, Muriel took her place on the hockey-field that afternoon with a heavy heart. Her long attendance upon Daisy had depressed her. But gradually, as the play proceeded, she began to forget herself and her troubles. The spring air exhilarated her, and when they returned to the field after a sharp shower her spirits had risen. She became even childishly gay in the course of a hotly-contested battle, and the sadness gradually died out of her eyes. She had grown less shy, less restrained, than of old.

Youth and health, and a dawning, unconscious beauty had sprung to life upon her face. She was no longer the frightened, bereft child of Simla days. She no longer hid a monstrous fear in her heart. She had put it all away from her wisely, resolutely, as a tale that is told.

The wild wind had blown the hair all loose about her face by the time the last goal was won. Hatless, flushed, and laughing, she drew back from the fray, Olga, elated by victory, clinging to her arm. It was a moment of keen triumph, for the fight had been hard, and she enjoyed it to the full as she stood there with her face to the sudden, scudding rain. The glow of exercise had braced every muscle. Every pulse was beating with warm, vigorous life.

She laughed aloud in sheer exultation, a low, merry laugh, and turned with Olga to march in triumphant procession from the field.

In that instant from a gate a few yards away that led into the road there sounded the short, imperious note of a motor-horn, repeated many times in a succession of sharp blasts. Every one stood to view the intruder with startled curiosity for perhaps five seconds. Then there came a sudden squeal of rapture from Olga, and in a moment she had torn her arm free and was gone, darting like a swallow over the turf.

Muriel stood looking after her, but she was as one turned to stone.

She was no longer aware of the children grouped around her. She no longer saw the fleeting sunshine, or felt the drift of rain in her face. Something immense and suffocating had closed about her heart.

Her racing pulses had ceased to beat.

A figure familiar to her--a man's figure, unimposing in height, unremarkable in build, but straight, straight as his own sword-blade--had bounded from the car and scaled the intervening gate with monkey-like agility.

He met the child's wild rush with one arm extended; the other--Muriel frowned sharply, peering with eyes half closed, then uttered a queer choked sound that had the semblance of a laugh--in place of the other arm there was an empty sleeve.

Through the rush of the wind she heard his voice.

"Hullo, kiddie, hullo! Hope I don't intrude. I've come over on purpose to pay my respects."

Olga's answer did not reach her. She was hanging round her hero's neck, and her head was down upon Nick's shoulder. It seemed to Muriel that she was crying, but if so, she received scant sympathy from the object of her solicitude. His cracked, gay laugh rang out across the field.

"What? Why, yesterday, to be sure. Spent the night in town. No, I know I didn't. Never meant to. Wanted to steal a march on you all. Why not?

I say, is that--Muriel?"

For the first time he seemed to perceive her, and instantly with a dexterous movement he had disengaged himself from Olga's clinging arms and was briskly approaching her. Two of the doctor's boys sprang to greet him, but he waved them airily aside.

"All right, you chaps, in a minute! Where's Dr. Jim? Go and tell him I'm here."

And then in a couple of seconds more they were face to face.

Muriel stared at him speechlessly. She felt cold from head to foot.

She had known that he was coming. She had been steeling herself for weeks to meet him in an armour of conventional reserve. But all her efforts had come to this. Swift, swift as the wind over wheat, his coming swept across her new-born confidence. It wavered and bent its head.

"Does your Excellency deign to remember the least and humblest of her servants?" queried Nick, with a deep salaam.

The laugh in his tone brought her sharply back to the demand of circ.u.mstance. Before the watching crowd of children, she forced her white lips to smile in answer, and in a moment she had recovered her self-possession. She remembered with a quick sense of relief that this man's power over her belonged to the past alone--to the tale that was told.

The hand she held out to him was almost steady. "Yes, I remember you, Nick," she said, with chilly courtesy. "I am sorry you have been ill.

Are you better?"

He made a queer grimace at her words, and for the second that her hand lay in his, she knew that he looked at her closely, piercingly.

"Thanks--awfully," he said. "As you may have noticed, there is a little less of me than there used to be. I hope you think it's an improvement."

She felt as if he had flung back her conventional sympathy in her face, and she stiffened instinctively. "I am sorry to see it," she returned icily.

Nick laughed enigmatically. "I thought you would be. Well, Olga, my child, what do you mean by growing up like this in my absence? You used to be just the right size for a kid, and now you are taller than I am."

"I'm not, Nick," the child declared with warmth. "And I never will be, there!"

She slid her arm again round his neck. Her eyes were full of tears.

Nick turned swiftly and bestowed a kiss upon the face which, though the face of a child, was so remarkably like his own.

"Aren't you going to introduce me to your friends?" he said.

"There's no need," said Olga, hugging him closer. "They all know Captain Ratcliffe of Wara. Why haven't you got the V.C., Nick, like Captain Grange?"

"Didn't qualify for it," returned Nick. "You see, I only distinguished myself by running away. Hullo! It's raining. Just run and tell the chauffeur to drive round to the house. You can go with him. And take your friends too. It'll carry you all. I'm going the garden way with Muriel."

Muriel realised the impossibility of frustrating this plan, though the last thing in the world that she desired was to be alone with him.

But the distance to the house was not great. As the children scampered away to the waiting motor-car she moved briskly to leave the field.

Nick walked beside her with his free, elastic swagger. In a few moments he reached out and took her hockey-stick from her.

"Jove!" he said. "It did me good to see you shoot that goal."

"I had no idea you were watching," she returned stiffly.

He grinned. "No, I saw that. Fun, wasn't it? Like to know what I said to myself?"

She made no answer, and his grin became a laugh. "I'm sure you would, so I'll tell you. I said, 'Prayer Number One is granted,' and I ticked it off the list, and duly acknowledged the same."

Muriel was plainly mystified. He was in the mood that most baffled her. "I don't know what you mean," she said at last.

Nick swung the hockey-stick idly. His yellow face, for all its wrinkles, looked peculiarly complacent.

"Let me explain," he said coolly; "I wanted to see you young again, and--my want has been satisfied, that's all."

Muriel looked sharply away from him, the vivid colour rushing all over her face. She remembered--and the memory seemed to stab her--a day long, long ago when she had lain in this man's arms in the extremity of helpless suffering, and had heard him praying above her head, brokenly, pa.s.sionately, for something far different--something from which she had come to shrink with a nameless, overmastering dread.