Sitting on the cushioned window-seat to drink it, she heard the tread of a horse's feet along the drive, and with a start she saw Nick come into view round a bend.

Her first impulse was to draw back out of sight, but the next moment she changed her mind and remained motionless. Her heart was suddenly beating very fast.

He was riding very carelessly, the bridle lying on the horse's neck.

The evening sun was shining full in his face, but he did not seem to mind. His head was thrown back. He rode like a returning conqueror, wearied it might be, but triumphant.

Pa.s.sing into the shadow of the house, he saw her instantly, and the smile that flashed into his face was one of sheer exultation. He dropped the bridle altogether to wave to her.

"Up already? Have you seen old Jim?"

She nodded. It was impossible at the moment not to reflect his smile.

"I am coming down soon," she told him.

"Come now," said Nick persuasively.

She hesitated. He was slipping from his horse. A groom came up and took the animal from him.

Nick paused below her window, and once more lifted his grinning, confident face.

"I say, Muriel!"

She leaned down a little. "Well?"

"Don't come if you don't want to, you know."

She laughed half-reluctantly, conscious of a queer desire to please him. Olga's words were running in her brain. He had fed on dust and ashes.

Yet still she hesitated. "Will you wait for me?"

"Till doomsday," said Nick obligingly.

And drawn by a power that would not be withstood, she went down, still smiling, and joined him in the garden.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

THE EAGLE STRIKES

Olga's recovery, when the crisis of the disease was past, was more rapid than even her father had antic.i.p.ated; and this fact, combined with a spell of glorious summer weather, made the period of her quarantine very tedious, particularly as Nick was rigidly excluded from the sick-room.

At Olga's earnest request Muriel consented to remain at Redlands.

Daisy had written to postpone her own return to the cottage, having received two or three invitations which she wished to accept if Muriel could still spare her.

Blake was in Scotland. His letters were not very frequent, and though his leave was nearly up, he did not speak of returning.

Muriel was thus thrown upon Jim Ratcliffe's care--a state of affairs which seemed to please him mightily. It was in fact his presence that made life easy for her just then. She saw considerably more of him than of Nick, the latter having completely relegated the duties of host to his brother. Though they met every day, they were seldom alone together, and she began to have a feeling that Nick's att.i.tude towards her had undergone a change. His manner was now always friendly, but never intimate. He did not seek her society, but neither did he avoid her. And never by word or gesture did he refer to anything that had been between them in the past. She even wondered sometimes if there might not possibly have been another interpretation to Olga's story.

That unwonted depression of his that the child had witnessed had surely never been inspired by her.

She found the time pa.s.s quickly enough during those six weeks. The care of Olga occupied her very fully. She was always busy devising some new scheme for her amus.e.m.e.nt.

Mrs. Ratcliffe returned to Weir, and Dr. Jim determined to transfer Olga to her home as soon as she was out of quarantine. With paternal kindliness, he insisted that Muriel must accompany her. Daisy's return was still uncertain, though it could not be long delayed; and Muriel had no urgent desire to return to the lonely life on the sh.o.r.e.

So, to Olga's outspoken delight, she yielded to the doctor's persuasion, and on the afternoon preceding the child's emanc.i.p.ation from her long imprisonment she walked down to the cottage to pack her things.

It was a golden day in the middle of September and she lingered awhile on the sh.o.r.e when her work was done. There was not a wave in all the vast, shimmering sea. The tide was going out, and the shallow ripples were clear as gla.s.s as they ran out along the white beach. Muriel paused often in her walk. She was sorry to leave the little fishing-village, realising that she had been very happy there. Life had pa.s.sed as smoothly as a dream of late, so smoothly that she had been content to live in the present with scarcely a thought for the future.

This afternoon she had begun to realise that her peaceful time was drawing to an end. In a few weeks more, she would be in town in all the bustle of preparation. And further still ahead of her--possibly two months--there loomed the prospect of her return to India, of Lady Ba.s.sett's soft patronage, of her marriage.

She shivered a little as one after another these coming events presented themselves. There was not one of them that she would not have postponed with relief. She stood still with her face to the sunlit sea, and told herself that her summer in England had been all too short. She had an almost pa.s.sionate longing for just one more year of home.

A pebble skimming past her and leaping from ripple to ripple like, a living thing caught her attention. She turned sharply, and the next moment smiled a welcome.

Nick had come up behind her unperceived. She greeted him with pleasure unfeigned. She was tired of her own morbid thoughts just then.

Whatever he might be, he was at least never depressing.

"I'm saying good-bye," she told him. "I don't suppose I shall ever come here again."

He came and stood beside her while he grubbed in the sand with a stick.

"Not even to see me?" he suggested.

"Are you going to live here?" she asked in surprise.

"Oh, I suppose so," said Nick, "when I marry."

"Are you going to be married?" Almost in spite of her the question leapt out.

He looked up, grinning shrewdly. "I put it to you," he said. "Am I the sort of man to live alone?"

She experienced a curious sense of relief. "But you are not alone in the world," she pointed out. "You have relations."

"You regard marriage as a last resource?" questioned Nick.

She coloured and turned her face to the sh.o.r.e. "I don't think any man ought to marry unless--unless--he cares," she said, striving hard to keep the personal note out of her voice.

"Exactly," said Nick, moving beside her. "But doesn't that remark apply to women as well?"

She did not answer him. A discussion on this topic was the last thing she desired.

He did not press the point, and she wondered a little at his forbearance. She glanced at him once or twice as they walked, but his humorous, yellow face told her nothing.

Reaching some rocks, he suddenly stopped. "I've got to get some seaweed for Olga. Do you mind waiting?"

"I will help you," she answered.