"It is my cousin. She is in great trouble. I will explain to you as we go along. Can you come to her? Her father is anxious about her."
She was a woman in ten thousand. She asked no questions, although it occurred to him that it must seem odd to her that she should be summoned, that Nelly should be in great trouble, seeing that he and her father were well.
"Shall I stay the night?" she asked. "Your cousin was so very anxious that I should come and stay with her. She showed me the room I should have--next to hers. Sir Denis seconded the invitation warmly. I said that I would try to come."
"It will be the best thing in the world. How long will you take to get ready? I have a hansom at the door."
She came down the stairs in four and a half minutes. Robin had been expeditious; it yet wanted twenty minutes to ten by his watch.
He helped her into the hansom, got in himself and placed her little bag at their feet. The hansom turned up the hill. She waited for him to speak.
"Nelly has found out that she made a mistake," he said quietly. "Her heart was not given to me, but to a Captain Langrishe of her father's old regiment. News has come that he has been badly wounded, so badly that in all probability he is dead by this time. He had exchanged into an Indian regiment, and almost as soon as he got out he was sent into the hills on the business of this wretched little war. Those conquests of ours, what they cost us! Why should we have all those thousands of miles of frontiers to defend? Why can't we stay at home and let the territories be for their own people?"
She smiled quietly to herself in the corner of the cab. The sudden excursion into politics was so characteristic of him.
The wind of the summer night came cool and friendly in their faces. The blue heaven was studded with stars. A little half-moon hung above the quiet shadows of the square through which they were passing. For the stillness they might have been miles away from London.
"What a Don Quixote you are!" she said. "I believe you would cede India if you had your way."
"I believe I should. Don't you wonder at me, Miss Gray? My forbears devoted their existence chiefly to extending the boundaries of the British Empire. Am I not their degenerate descendant?"