"Are you recruiting after last night's triumphs, or escaping from popular enthusiasm, Miss Tresilyan? I have met several Frenchmen already who are quite childish about your singing. I should not advise you to venture on the Terrace to-day. There might be temptations to vanity, which Mr. Fullarton will tell you are dangerous."
She had so completely made up her mind to some allusion to her change of purpose, or to his own absence, that it was rather aggravating to find him ignore both utterly. But she rallied well.
"Nothing half so imaginative, Major Keene. It was a very stupid party, and I only sang once, as, I dare say, you have heard. We are only going to help Mrs. Fullarton to find some wild-flowers. I hope you have not anticipated us?"
He _fixed_ her with the cool, appreciative look that was harder to meet than even his sneer.
"No; the flowers are safe from me. I don't care enough about them to keep them; and it is a pity to pick them and throw them away to wither. But I would have asked to be allowed to help you in your search, only--I don't like to spoil a picture. You brought a very good one to my mind as you turned the corner, a 'Descent into Egypt,' that I saw long ago. The blot _there_, I remember, was a very stout, rubicund Joseph, not at all worthy of the imperial Madonna."
While he was speaking he drew back, and leaned lazily against the stem of the olive, with the evident intention of resuming his original posture as soon as courtesy would allow. Miss Tresilyan could not restrain a quick gesture of impatience.
"As we did not come out to _poser_, Mr. Fullarton, don't you think we had better not delay any longer? We are so late already, that I am sure the rest of the party will be tired of waiting."
Guess if her companion was loth to obey her.
They moved on for some time almost in silence. Cecil's thoughts were busy with a picture too--not the less vivid because only her own imagination had painted it. Her deep, dreamy eyes passed over the landscape actually before them without catching one of its details: they were looking on a desolate stony plain, cracked and calcined by a fierce Indian sun--a few plumy palms in the background, and the rocky bed of a river half dried up--in the foreground a crowd of wild barbaric soldiery, with savage, swarthy features, bareheaded or white-turbaned; mingled with these were horsemen in the uniform of our light dragoons, sabring right and left mercilessly. In the very centre of the _mêlée_ was one figure, round which all the others seemed to group themselves as mere accessories. She saw, very distinctly, the dark, determined face, set, every line of it, in an unspeakable ferocity, with a world of murderous meaning in the gleaming eyes--so distinctly that it drove out the remembrance of the same man's face, expressive of nothing but passionless indifference, though she looked upon it but a few minutes since under the gray branches of the olive. She almost heard his clear, imperious tones cheering on and rallying his troopers, when a ruder voice broke her reverie.