Lady Harriet was snubbed, and she felt the effects of it for the rest of the evening.  Walking home with her husband through the starlight later, Stella laughed a little over the episode; but Monck was not responsive.  He seemed engrossed in thought.

He went with her to her room, and there bade her good-night, observing that he had work to do and might be late.

“It is already late,” she said.  “Don’t be long!  I shall only lie awake till you come.”

He frowned at her.  “I shall be very angry if you do.”

“I can’t help that,” she said.  “I can’t sleep properly till you come.”

He looked her in the eyes.  “You’re not nervous?  You’ve got Peter.”

“Oh, I am not in the least nervous on my own account,” she told him.

“You needn’t be on mine,” he said.

She laughed, but her lips were piteous.  “Well, don’t be long anyway!” she pleaded.  “Don’t forget I am waiting for you!”

“Forget!” he said.  For an instant his hold upon her was passionate.  He kissed her fiercely, blindly, even violently; then with a muttered word of inarticulate apology he let her go.

She heard him stride away down the passage, and in a few moments Peter came and very softly closed the door.  She knew that he was there on guard until his master should return.

She sat down with a beating heart and leaned back with closed eyes.  A heavy sense of foreboding oppressed her.  She was very tired, but yet she knew that sleep was far away.  Just as once she had felt a dread that was physical on behalf of Ralph Dacre, so now she felt weighed down by suspense and loneliness.  Only now it was a thousand times magnified, for this man was her world.  She tried to picture to herself what it would have meant to her had that shot in the jungle slain him instead of Captain Ermsted.  But the bare thought was beyond endurance.  Once she could have borne it, but not now—­not now!  Once she could have denied her love and fared forth alone into the desert.  But he had captured her, and now she was irrevocably his.  Her spirit pined almost unconsciously whenever he was absent from her.  Her body knew no rest without him.  From the moment of his leaving her, she was ever secretly on fire for his return.

Had they been in England she knew that it would have been otherwise.  In a calm and temperate atmosphere she could have attained a serene, unruffled happiness.  But India, fevered and pitiless, held her in scorching grip.  She dwelt as it were on the edge of a roaring furnace that consumed some victims every day.  Her life was strung up to a pitch that frightened her.  The very intensity of the love that Everard Monck had practically forced into being within her was almost more than she could bear.  It hurt her like the searing of a flame, and yet in the hurt there was rapture.  For the icy blast of the desert could never reach her now.  Unless—­unless—­ah, was there not a flaming sword still threatening her wherever she pitched her camp?  Surround herself as she would with the magic essences of love, did not the vengeance await her—­even now—­even now?  Could she ever count herself safe so long as she remained in this land of treachery and terrible vengeance?  Could there ever be any peace so near to the burning fiery furnace?