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Another horse with a side-saddle was waiting, held by a grinning little saice. The sun was already rising rapidly behind the mountains. She began to race through her toilet at a speed that showed her to have caught some of the fever of her cavalier's impatience. Hastening out at length she found Nick dismounted and waiting for her by the verandah-steps.
The look of the old birch trees, with the one side of their curling branches showing bright against the moonlit sky, and the other darkening the bushes and carriage-drive with their black shadows; the calm, rich glitter of the pond, ever swelling like a sound; the moonlit sparkle of the dewdrops on the flowers in front of the verandah; the graceful shadows of those flowers where they lay thrown upon the grey stonework; the cry of a quail on the far side of the pond; the voice of some one walking on the high road; the quiet, scarcely audible scrunching of two old birch trees against one another; the humming of a mosquito at my car under the coverlet; the fall of an apple as it caught against a branch and rustled among the dry leaves; the leapings of frogs as they approached almost to the verandah-steps and sat with the moon shining mysteriously on their green backs all these things took on for me a strange significance a significance of exceeding beauty and of infinite love.
The blue jay laughed at the gate gleefully, uproariously, derisively. Stella shivered. "He is coming!" said Peter. She started up. Monck was returning. He came up the compound like a man who has been beaten in a race. His face was grey, his eyes terrible. Stella went swiftly to the verandah-steps to meet him. "Everard! What is it? Oh, what is it?" she said. He took her arm, turning her back.
Do you think Aunt Mary would mind if I stayed with you?" He smiled at her whimsically. "Perhaps not, princess; but I am going to take you back to her all the same. Say good-night to Aunt Stella! She looks as if a good dose of bed would do her good." Tommy, with his mask in his hand, came running up the verandah-steps, and Tessa sprang to meet him. "Oh, Tommy darling, I have enjoyed myself so!"
I believe that when the moon rose the men saw they had nothing to fear, and, by twos and threes and half-troops, crept back into Cantonments very much ashamed of themselves. Meantime, the Drum-Horse, disgusted at his treatment by old friends, pulled up, wheeled round, and trotted up to the Mess verandah-steps for bread.
A tall, straight figure was coming towards her between the whispering tamarisks. It was not Major Ralston. He walked with a slouch, and this man's gait was firm and purposeful. He came up to the verandah-steps with unfaltering determination. He was looking full at her, and she knew that she stood revealed in the marvellous Indian moonlight.
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