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Updated: June 13, 2025
He spoke rather rapidly, as if to ward off interruption or dissent; and Lenox started at finding the initiative thus taken out of his hands. It was not Quita's doing. He felt sure of that. But Dick's manner puzzled him, and mere friendliness made acquiescence impossible. "Well, you seem in a deuce of a hurry to be quit of us," he said, with a short laugh.
From his point of view, Quita's unique position of personal freedom, coupled with legal bondage, added a distinct flavour to the whole affair: and so well pleased was he with the aspect of things in general, that, before reaching Potrain, he headed his pony up another corkscrew path, that climbed to another doll's house bungalow.
So I'm obliged to visit them in state and talk to them like a father, after collecting their fine; and I'm afraid I must take your husband and Richardson along with me, besides a handful of cavalry and infantry by way of protection and prestige." Quita's face fell. "For how long?" she asked, collecting her last crumbs of pastry with a peculiar deliberation. "We might be ten days coming and going.
She spoke with studied indifference; but her fingers were busy uprooting a patch of moss. "Oh yes, India has a healthy appetite for unsparing workers! She is a grasping harridan, who demands all and offers nothing. She devours the lives of men who are foolish enough to lose their hearts to her, and wrecks their bodies by way of thanks." Quita's lips lifted in the merest shadow of a smile.
But he thrust away the thought as morbid and cowardly; and by way of curative drew Quita's last letter out of his breast-pocket. The fact of her love for him still remained a miracle incompletely realised; and she had been right in her belief that he had yet to discover its intensity and depth. The great noontide silence had already fallen upon house and compound.
But nothing beyond formal greetings passed between them. Twice she happened to be riding alone with Lenox; the third time, her husband was with them: and on every occasion Quita's companion was James Garth, the only one among them all who enjoyed the situation.
He grew them in pots expressly for the purpose; and his bearer set them in a wine-glass on his breakfast-table every morning. Quita's verdict on her visitor moved him to a smile of half-cynical amusement. He enjoyed her occasional unabashed lapses into the eternal feminine. "I'm with you there," he answered, heartily. "The worst fault a human being can commit is to be faultless. Poor Mrs Desmond!
Rapier-like shafts of light pierced the purple lengths of shadows that engulfed the valley. Threading their way through fir and deodar and pine, they flung all their radiant length across a rock-studded carpet of fir-needles and moss, and rested, like a caress, upon Quita's face and figure.
For a while Lenox followed them with his eyes, as they circled smoothly in and out among the dancers, as notable a couple as the room contained. Then he raked the shifting crowd for Quita's grey-green figure, in vain. Neither she nor Garth was to be seen.
Then they fell silent till the parade-ground came in sight. This, their first appearance together in public, was something of an ordeal to both; and at the last minute Quita's courage evaporated. "Eldred . . . stop, please," she said suddenly. "I'm shy of them all; and I don't want to talk to them just now."
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