"Beatrice! That's Miss Cary, isn't it? Anything happened to her?"
Colonel Carmichael shrugged his shoulders with the impatience of a man
whose nerves are overstrained by anxiety.
"I don't know--we've lost her," he said. "We must do something at
once. Heaven alone knows what has happened."
No one indeed knew what had happened--not even the lonely man who
waited, revolver in hand, for the final encounter on whose issue hung
the fortunes of them all.
Only one knew, and that was Beatrice herself as she stood before the
shattered doorway of the Colonel's drawing-room, amidst the debris of
wrecked, shot-riddled furniture, face to face with Nehal Singh.
CHAPTER IX
HALF-LIGHT
Once before she had placed herself in his path, trusting to her skill,
her daring, above all, her beauty. With laughter in her heart and
cold-blooded coquetry she had chosen out the spot before the altar
where the sunlight struck burnished gold from her waving hair and lent
deeper, softening shades to her eyes. With cruel satisfaction, not
unmixed with admiration, she had seen her power successful and the
awe-struck wonder and veneration creep into his face. In the silence
and peace of the temple she had plunged reckless hands into the woven
threads of his life. Amidst the shriek of war, face to face with
death, she sought to save him. It was another woman who stood opposite
the yielding, cracking door, past whose head a half-spent bullet spat
its way, burying itself in the wall behind her,--another woman,
disheveled, forgetful of her wan beauty, trusting to no power but that
which her heart gave her to face the man she had betrayed and ruined.
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