were hurrying towards them.

Quita felt her husband stiffen, and lifted her head.

"Thank you--thank you," she said with a twisted smile. "I think I can
stand on my feet now."

In two strides he was clear of the mud, and had set her on firm earth.
But she was still clinging to his arm when Garth came up, brimming with
concern.

"I'm quite disappointingly all right," she assured him hastily, stung by
a keen sense that her catastrophe had fallen headlong from impending
tragedy to bathos. "Please bestow all your sympathy on Mr Bathurst, and
Unlimited Loo!"

For a second Garth looked up at the man who stood beside her; but only
for a second. For in the Scotchman's eye hate gleamed like a naked
sword; and Garth had small taste for bared weapons of any kind.

"_Ah, mon pauvre Michel_!" Quita exclaimed, in a quick rush of
tenderness, as her brother half ran to her, white and panting, both hands
outstretched: and deserting Lenox, she flew to him, anathematising her
own folly in a rapid flow of French. "Take me to my tent now," she
concluded, linking her arm in his. "I still feel idiotically shaky, and
I am certainly no loss to my side!--Mr Bathurst"--she turned in Jeff's
direction--"please forgive me. I promise I'll never ask you to lend me a
polo pony again!"

Bathurst,--who had rescued his treasure, and was feeling him all over
with skilled hands,--shouted a cheery: "Don't mention it, Miss Maurice.
Always glad to oblige a lady!"

And with a tired smile she turned back to Michael.

"_Viens, mon cher_," she said gently; and he led her away.

Conscious of Garth's eyes on her face, she could not trust herself to
look again at Lenox, who had neither moved nor spoken since he set her on
dry ground. But that one moment in his arms had solved her problem in a
fashion that she dreamed not of: a fashion that still seemed past belief.
She knew now that she had never lost him; and her heart sang a Jubilate
Deo all the way to her tent. But she knew also that his pride equalled
hers; that the first move was 'up to her'; and that now, at last, she
might make it without fear of rebuff. But how--how?

Ten minutes later Maurice left her prostrate, in the twilight of her
tent;--eau de cologne on her temples, and a chaos of mixed emotions at
her heart.

CHAPTER XII.

"How the world seems made for each of us;
How all we perceive and know in it
Tends to some moment's product,--thus,
When the soul declares