"Muriel, you're a little idiot!"
There was little in the words to comfort her, yet she was instantly
and vastly reassured. She was also for the moment overwhelmingly
ashamed, but he did not give her time to think of that.
"I couldn't get in any other way," he said. "I tried the doors first,
hammered at them, but no one came. Look here! Olga is ill, very ill,
and she wants you badly. Are you brave enough to come?"
"Oh!" Muriel said, with a gasp. "Now, do you mean? With--with you?"
He threw her an odd look under his flickering eyelids, and she noted
with a scared minuteness of attention the gleam of the lamplight on
their pale lashes. She had always hated pale eyelashes. They seemed to
her untrustworthy.
"Yes," he told her grimly. "All alone--with me--in the storm. Shall
you be afraid--if I give you my hand to hold? You've done it before."
Was he mocking her weakness? She could not say. She only knew that he
watched her with the intensity of an eagle that marks its quarry. He
did not mean her to refuse.
"What is the matter with Olga?" she asked.
"I don't know. I believe it is sunstroke. We were motoring in the
mid-day heat. She didn't seem to feel it at the time, but her head
ached when we got in. She is in a high fever now. I've sent my man on
in the motor to fetch Jim's locum from Weir.
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