When Penelope heard the news she fainted, and recovered only to beg Lady Haigh piteously to ask Major Keeling to come to her. She must see him, she said, when her friend demurred; and Lady Haigh, with some misgivings, sent off the note. She felt that she would like to warn Major Keeling when he arrived, and yet she did not know exactly what she feared, but there had been a wild look in Penelope’s eyes which frightened her. “She is not herself. You will make allowances?” she said eagerly, as she took him into the drawing-room. “Make allowances--I, for her?” he said, with such an accent of reproach that Lady Haigh was too much flurried to explain that she was anxious he should not be drawn into doing anything rash. It was some comfort to her to notice how big and strong he looked, not the kind of man who would allow himself to be hurried into unwisdom, and she could not wonder that Penelope felt him a tower of strength. But the words which reached her as she left the room made her stop her ears and hurry away in despair. She knew exactly how Penelope had run to meet him, white-faced, trembling, with dilated eyes, and seized his hand in both hers as she cried, “Oh, Major Keeling, save him, save him!” “What is it you want me to do?” he asked her, the laborious speeches of condolence he had prepared all forgotten. “I thought--oh, surely, you will go to Gamara, won’t you? You are so well known, and the natives have such a regard for you--you could make them give him up.” He shook his head. The childlike simplicity of the appeal was almost irresistible, but he knew better than she did how hopeless such an attempt would be made by the very fame of which she spoke. “Oh, don’t say you won’t do it!” she entreated. “He is all I have.” “Listen,” he said. “You know I thought the journey so dangerous that I refused to the last to let your brother go. Yet there was a chance for him. For me there would be none, the moment I set foot beyond our own border. You will do me the justice to believe that I would not grudge my life if losing it could do any good, but it could do none. And even if it would, I could not go. I am in command here, and I cannot desert my post.” She looked at him as though she had not heard him. “It is Colin,” she said; “all I have. And you said--you cared.” “And you say I don’t if I won’t go?” he asked sharply. “Then you are talking of what you don’t understand. I could not leave Khemistan if--even if it was your life, and not your brother’s, that was at stake--even if it tore my heart out.” Penelope passed her hand over her brow. “No,” she said feebly, “it would not signify then. But for Colin!”