"But you can do no earthly good by waiting. We may be an hour or more before we get up here again. It will be slow work, if . . . if Lenox is alive;--and you will be drenched to the skin." "There are worse evils than that!" she answered with gentle immobility. "Don't trouble about me, please. I _must_ stay here till I know what has happened; and I think Miss Maurice will wish to stay too. We shall come to no harm. We women have nine lives, you know!" "And if you will--you will. . . . I know that also! But at least take a nip to keep out the damp. Your husband gave me this at the last moment for the three of you." "How like him to think of it!" she murmured, smiling unsteadily. "Yes--it _was_ like him,"--and in the expansion of the moment the warm-hearted Resident put a fatherly hand on her shoulder. "He's a deuced fine fellow, my dear, and he has found a wife that's worthy of him." Honor blushed rose-red, and took the proffered stimulant. "I'll give Miss Maurice some too," she said. "Don't lose a second on our account, please." Thus urged, the good man hurried away; and Honor went straight to Quita, whose unnatural apathy cut her to the heart. "Miss Maurice, here's brandy," she said softly. "Drink all of it, before I help you down." Quita emptied the tumbler; and Honor, grasping her waist with both hands, lifted her out of the saddle. "How strong you are," she said, in the toneless voice of a sleep-walker. Then her frozen anguish melted suddenly and completely. For Honor Desmond, instead of releasing her, clasped her close, kissing her, with passionate tenderness, on cheeks and brows, like wet marble: and in the midst of her bewildered misery Quita realised dimly what it might mean to possess a mother. "Theo and I know about it all," Honor explained at length; and Quita nodded. The fact that she was crying her heart out on the shoulder of her detested rival made the whole incident dreamlike to the verge of stupefaction: and it was Honor who spoke again. "We'll just wait here together till they come back; and shut--the worst out of our thoughts. You have splendid courage, my dear, and I think I love nothing in the world more than courage. Sit down with me now on this pile of fir-needles. It looks a little less saturated than the rest of the world." Still keeping an arm round her, she drew her down unresisting to her side: and Quita, choking back the tears that had probably saved her brain from after-effects of the shock, looked with awakened interest at her new-found friend. "I don't deserve that you should be so good to me," she said, humour flashing through her pain like a watery sunbeam on a day of mist. "I have hated you, with all my heart, ever since I first saw you!" At which confession Honor pressed her closer. "Bless you for telling me!--I take it simply as the measure of--your love for him." "_Mon Dieu_, no! Not now," she answered very low.