the country, and well disposed towards us, and
that it was her pleasure to go veiled; for, though of course I spoke in
English, I was afraid that she might understand what we were saying from
the expression of our faces, and besides, I remembered her warning.

On the following day Leo got up almost entirely recovered. The flesh
wound in his side was healed, and his constitution, naturally a vigorous
one, had shaken off the exhaustion consequent on his terrible fever with
a rapidity that I can only attribute to the effects of the wonderful
drug which Ayesha had given to him, and also to the fact that his
illness had been too short to reduce him very much. With his returning
health came back full recollection of all his adventures up to the time
when he had lost consciousness in the marsh, and of course of Ustane
also, to whom I had discovered he had grown considerably attached.
Indeed, he overwhelmed me with questions about the poor girl, which I
did not dare to answer, for after Leo's first awakening _She_ had sent
for me, and again warned me solemnly that I was to reveal nothing of the
story to him, delicately hinting that if I did it would be the worse for
me. She also, for the second time, cautioned me not to tell Leo anything
more than I was obliged about herself, saying that she would reveal
herself to him in her own time.

Indeed, her whole manner changed. After all that I had seen I had
expected that she would take the earliest opportunity of claiming the
man she believed to be her old-world lover, but this, for some reason of
her own, which was at the time quite inscrutable to me, she did not do.
All that she did was to attend to his wants quietly, and with a humility
which was in striking contrast with her former imperious bearing,
addressing him always in a tone of something very like respect, and
keeping him with her as much as possible. Of course his curiosity was as
much excited about this mysterious woman as my own had been, and he was
particularly anxious to see her face, which I had, without entering
into particulars, told him was as lovely as her form and voice. This
in itself was enough to raise the expectations of any young man to a
dangerous pitch, and, had it not been that he had not as yet completely
shaken off the effects of illness, and was much troubled in his mind
about Ustane, of whose affection and brave devotion he spoke in touching
terms, I have no doubt that he would have entered into her