Travers!
How could you!"
Colonel Carmichael shook his head. He was overwhelmed by a cross-current
of conflicting emotions to which he could give no name.
"True or not true, your--eh--statement has got us into a pretty mess,
Miss Cary," he said. "You have played with fire. Pray Heaven that it
has not set light to Marut!"
She turned and looked at him. In that pale face upon which had sunk
the light of a sudden peace the Colonel read something which sent his
blunt instinct searching wildly for a solution.
"I did what I had to do, Colonel Carmichael," she said. "Come, mother,
we must go home."
CHAPTER III
A FAREWELL
John Stafford sat at his table by the open door which looked on to the
garden. The room behind him was bare of all graceful or even tasteful
ornament--a few native weapons, captured probably during small
frontier wars, hung on the wall, but nothing else relieved its blank,
whitewashed monotony. The one photograph of his father which had once
been fastened above the mantelpiece had been taken down months before
and the hole made by the nail carefully and methodically filled and
painted over. The room typified the man in its painful order, its
painful whitewashed cleanliness, its rigid plainness. But the garden
was the symbol of the hidden possibility in him, the corner of warm,
impulsive feeling which the world had never seen. The roses grew up to
the very steps of the verandah; they had been trained to clamber over
the trellis-work as though seeking to gain entrance to his room; they
spread themselves in rich, glowing variety over the little patch of
ground, and one of their number, the most lovely and fullest blown,
hung her heavy head in splendid isolation from the vase upon his
table.
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