"'Miss Poles,' I resumed in a mild tone, 'it is not right to flee from your friends because you are suffering. Périères and I have not done anything, and yet, ever since this morning you have put us in a terrible state of anxiety about you.'
"'It is true,' said she, touched by my eloquence. 'I have been unjust. Forgive me.'
"She put out her hand, and we shook it heartily.
"'Suppose,' suggested Périères, 'that whilst we are waiting for the caravan we take a short rest below there, under that magnificent sammor, which reminds me of the one in the garden of the Governor of Singate? We know that you are not tired. Miss Poles, but our horses are blown, and I am sure you will have mercy on them.'
"'Be it so!' she replied, 'especially as I am rather hungry!'
"'Our ride has given us an appetite, too, but all the provisions are with the camels.'
"'Oh! she replied, with a still broken voice, 'I always carry my lunch with me.'
"She produced a sort of cartridge-box, which she carried on her belt, wherein was a supply of excellent viands, and we soon came to the conclusion that if her heart was affected, her digestion was unimpaired.
"When our caravan appeared in sight, Périères mounted his steed and trotted off to tell Madame de Guéran that her travelling companion had been recovered.
"As soon as I was alone with Miss Poles, I made a trial of moral homoeopathy; I put in force the system of like to like, _similia similibus_. I tried to cure her one love by another, and to substitute our friend Périères for the too volatile Delange. It was doing poor Périères a shabby turn, but it was absolutely necessary to console our companion and to replace one weakness by another. I sang the praises of Périères to such an extent; I depicted him in such tender, sentimental, plaintive colours; I so delicately hinted at a supposititious weakness on his part for Miss Poles, that at the end of an hour's conversation, a smile once more spread itself over our Englishwoman's lips, and her heart caught glimpses of a new horizon.
"'All right, my friend,' said Périères, when he heard how I had disposed of him, 'I owe you one for that.'
"At our evening's halting place, near the well of Roway, the inhabitants of a neighbouring encampment very unexpectedly made an inroad upon us in search of medicine.