eer 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