"You have been much admired to-night, dear child," she murmured to the girl, as they pa.s.sed into the cloakroom.

Muriel's eyes looked disdainful for an instant, but they could not remain so. As swiftly the happiness flashed back into them.

"I have enjoyed myself," she said simply.

She threw a gauzy scarf about her neck, and turned to go. She did not want her evening spoilt by criticisms however honeyed.

The great marble entrance was crowded with departing guests. She edged her way to one of the pillars at the head of the long flight of steps, watching party after party descend to the waiting carriages. The dancing had not yet ceased, and strains of waltz-music came to her where she stood, fitful, alluring, plaintive. They were playing "The Blue Danube."

She listened to it as one in a dream, and while she listened the tears gathered in her eyes. How was it she had been so slow to understand?

Would she ever make it up to him? She wondered how long he meant to keep her in suspense. It was not like him to linger thus if he had indeed received her message. She hoped he would come soon. The waiting was hard to bear.

She called to mind once more the last words he had spoken to her.

He had said that he would not swoop a second time, but she could not imagine him doing anything else. He would be sudden, he would be disconcerting, he would be overwhelming. He would come on winged feet in answer to her call, but he would give her no quarter. He would neither ask nor demand. He would simply take.

She caught her breath and hastened to divert her thought, realising that she was on the verge of the old torturing process of self-intimidation which had so often before unnerved her.

The throng about her had lessened considerably. Glancing downwards, she discerned at the foot of the steps the old beggar who so persistently haunted the Residency gates, incurring thereby Lady Ba.s.sett's alarmed displeasure. He was crouching well to one side in the familiar att.i.tude of supplication. There were dozens like him in Ghawalkhand, but she knew him by the peculiar, gibbering movement of the wiry beard that protruded from his chuddah. He was repulsive, but in a fashion fascinating. He made her think of a wizened old monkey who had wandered from his kind.

She had come to regard him almost in the light of a protege, and, remembering suddenly that he had besought an alms of her in vain some hours before, she turned impulsively to a man she knew who had just come up.

"Colonel Cathcart, will you lend me a rupee?"

He dived in his pocket and brought out a handful of money. She found the coin she wanted, thanked him with a smile, and began to descend the steps.

The old native was not looking at her. Something else seemed to have caught his attention. For the moment he had ceased to cringe and implore.

She heard Sir Reginald's voice above her. He was standing in talk with the Rajah while he waited for his wife.

And then--she was half-way down the steps when it happened--a sudden loud cry rang fiercely up to her, arresting her where she stood--a man's voice inarticulate at first, bursting from mere sound into furious headlong denunciation.

"You infernal hound!" it cried. "You d.a.m.ned a.s.sa.s.sin!"

At the same instant the old beggar at the foot of the palace steps sprang panther-like from his crouching position to hurl himself bodily at something that skulked in the shadows beyond him.

The marvellous agility of the action, the unerring precision with which he pounced upon his prey, above all, the voice that had yelled in execration, sent such a stab of amazed recognition through Muriel that she stood for a second as one petrified.

But the next instant all her senses were p.r.i.c.ked into alertness by a revolver-shot. Another came, and yet another. They were fighting below like tigers--two men in native dress, swaying, straining, struggling, not three yards from where she stood.

She never fully remembered afterwards how she came to realise that Nick--Nick himself--was there before her in the flesh, fighting like a demon, fighting as she had seen him fight once long ago when every nerve in her body had been strung to agonised repulsion.

She felt no repulsion now--no shrinking of any sort, only a wild anguish of fear for his sake that drove her like a mad creature down the intervening steps, that sent her flashing between him and his adversary, that inspired her to wrench away the smoking revolver from the murderous hand that gripped it.

She went through those awful moments as a woman possessed, blindly obeying the compelling force, goaded by sheer, primaeval instinct to protect her own. It was but a conflict of seconds, but while it lasted she was untrammelled by any doubts or hesitations. She was sublimely sure of herself. She was superbly unafraid.

When it was over, when men crowded round and dragged her enemy back, when the pressing need was past, her courage fell from her like a mantle. She sank down upon the steps, a trembling, hysterical woman, and began to cry.

Some one bent over her, some one whispered soothing words, some one drew the revolver out of her weak grasp. Looking up, she saw the old native beggar upon whom she had thought to bestow her charity.

"Oh, Nick!" she gasped. "Nick!" And there stopped in sudden misgiving.

Was this grotesque figure indeed Nick? Could it be--this man who had sat at the Residency gates for weeks, this man to whom she had so often tossed an alms?

Her brain had begun to reel, but she clung to the central idea, as one in deep waters clinging to a spar.

"Speak to me!" she entreated. "Only speak to me!"

But before he could answer, Bobby Fraser pushed suddenly forward, bent over, lifted her. "You are not hurt, Miss Roscoe?" he questioned anxiously, deep concern on his kindly face. "The d.a.m.ned swine didn't touch you? There! Come back into the palace. You're the bravest girl I ever met."

He began to help her up the steps, but though she was spent and near to fainting she resisted him.

"That man--" she faltered. "Don't--don't let him go!"

"Certainly not," said Bobby promptly. "Here, you old scarecrow, come and lend a hand!"

But the old scarecrow apparently had other plans for himself, for he had already vanished from the scene as swiftly and noiselessly as a shadow from a sheet.

"He is gone!" wailed Muriel. "He is gone! Oh, why did you let him go?"

"He'll turn up again," said Bobby consolingly. "That sort of chap always does. I say, how ghastly you look! Take my arm! You are not going to faint, are you? Ah, here is Colonel Cathcart! Miss Roscoe isn't hurt, sir--only upset. Can't we get her back to the palace?"

They bore her back between them, and left her to be tended by the women. She was not unconscious, but the shock had utterly unstrung her. She lay with closed eyes, listening vaguely to the buzz of excited comment about her, and wondering, wondering with an aching heart, why he had gone.

No one seemed to know exactly what had taken place, and she was too exhausted to tell. Possibly she would hot have told in any case. It was known only that an attempt had been made upon the life of the British Resident, Sir Reginald Ba.s.sett, and it was surmised that Muriel had realised the murderous intention in time to frustrate it.

Certainly a native had tried to help her, but since the native had disappeared, his share in the conflict was not regarded as very great.

As a matter of fact, the light had been too uncertain and the struggle too confused for even the eye-witnesses to know with any certainty what had taken place. Theories and speculations were many and various, but not one of them went near to the truth.

"Dear Muriel will tell us presently just how it happened," Lady Ba.s.sett said in her soft voice.

But Muriel was as one who heard not. She would not even open her eyes till Sir Reginald came to her, pillowed her head against him, kissed her white face, and called her his brave little girl.

That moved her at last, awaking in her the old piteous hunger, never wholly stifled, for her father. She turned and clung to him convulsively with an inarticulate murmuring that ended in pa.s.sionate tears.

CHAPTER LIII

THE LAST SKIRMISH

Why had he gone? That was the question that vexed Muriel's soul through the long hours that followed her return to the Residency.

Lying sleepless on her bed, she racked her weary brain for an answer to the riddle, but found none. Her brief doubt regarding him had long since fled. She knew with absolute certainty that it was Nick and no other who had yelled those furious words, who had made that panther-spring, who had leaned over her and withdrawn the revolver from her hold, telling her softly not to cry. But why had he gone just then when she needed him most?

Surely by now her message had reached him! Surely he knew that she wanted him, that she had lowered what he had termed her miserable little rag of pride to tell him so! Then why was he tormenting her thus--playing with her as a cat might play with a mouse? Was he taking his revenge for all the bitter scorn she had flung at him in the past?

Did he think to wring from her some more definite appeal? Ah, that was it! Like a searchlight flashing inwards, she remembered her promise to him uttered long ago against her will--his answering oath. And she knew that he meant to hold her to that promise--that he would exact the very uttermost sacrifice that it entailed; and then perchance--she shivered at the unendurable thought--he would laugh his baffling, enigmatical laugh, and go his way.

But this was unbearable, impossible. She would sooner die than suffer it. She would sooner--yes, she would almost sooner--break her promise.

And then, to save her from distraction, the other side of the picture presented itself, that reverse side which he had once tauntingly advised her to study. If he truly loved her, he would not treat her thus. It would not gratify him to see her in the dust. If he still cared, as Daisy had a.s.sured her he did, it would not be his pleasure to make her suffer. But then again--oh, torturing question!--had that been so, would he have gone at that critical moment, would he have left her, when a look, a touch, would have sufficed to establish complete understanding?