FullReads

“I am glad to see you looking better,” he said as he reached her. “I am afraid there isn’t much more than a cupful left. I had to go nearly half a mile to get it, and it has been running out steadily all the way back.”

He knelt down before her, deep concern on his sunburnt face. Reluctantly, out of sheer gratitude, she dipped her handkerchief in the tepid drain, and bathed her face and hands.

“I am so sorry to give you all this trouble,” she murmured.

He smiled with raised brows.

“I think I ought to say that. You will never trust yourself to me again after this experience.”

She looked at him with a guilty sense of duplicity.

“I–scarcely see how you were to blame for it,” she said, rather faintly.

He surveyed her for a moment in silence. Then, “I hardly know how to break it to you,” he said. “I am afraid the matter is rather more serious than you think.”

She forced a smile. This delicate preparation was far more difficult to endure than the actual calamity to which it paved the way.

“Please don’t treat me like a coward,” she said. “I know I was foolish enough to faint, but it was not so much from fright as from the heat.”

“You behaved splendidly,” he returned, his dark eyes still intently watching her. “But this is not so much a case for nerve as for resignation. Mrs. Denvers, you will never forgive me, I know. That jump of the mare’s damaged one of the shafts. The wonder is it didn’t break altogether. I have had to send the saice back to Farabad to try and get it patched up, and there is very little chance of our getting back to Kundaghat for two or three hours to come.”

All the time that he was communicating this tragic news, Beryl’s eyes were upon his face. She paid no heed to his scrutiny. Simply, with absolute steadiness, she returned it.

And she detected nothing–nothing but the most earnest regret, the most courteous anxiety regarding her welfare. Could it all be a monstrous lie, she asked herself. And yet it was to the smallest detail the story she had been warned to expect.

“But surely,” she said, at last, “we cannot be so very far from Kundaghat?”

“No great distance as the crow flies,” said Fletcher, “but a good many miles by road. I am afraid there is nothing for it but to wait till the mischief is repaired. My only comfort is that you will feel the heat less in returning later in the day. There are some pine trees on the other side of the rise where you can rest. If I had only brought something to eat I should have less cause to blame myself. As it is, do you think you will be able to hold out?”

She smiled at that.

“Oh, I am not starving yet,” she said, with more assurance; “but I do not see the use of sitting still under the circumstances. I am quite rested now. Let us walk back to Farabad, and we might start on foot along the lower road for Kundaghat, and tell your man to overtake us.”

Notwithstanding the resolution she infused into her voice, she made the proposal somewhat breathlessly, for she knew–in her heart she knew–that it would be instantly negatived.

And so it was. His face expressed sharp surprise for a second, developing into prompt remonstrance.

“My dear Mrs. Denvers, in this heat! You have not the least idea of what it would mean. You simply have not the strength for such a venture.”

But Beryl was growing bolder in the face of emergency. She coolly set his assurance aside.

“I do not quite agree with you,” she said. “I am a better walker than you seem to imagine, and the walk into Farabad certainly would not kill me. We might be able to hire some conveyance there–a tonga or even a bullock-cart”–she laughed a little–“would be better than nothing.”