He called her Juliet then, and many another lover's name. She took them all, and gave them back again without reserve, until, as they stood there, someone passing outward from the arched passage to the garden, paused to listen at the half-heard sound of voices. For Father Ninian--who had come down to his own rooms for a pair of foils wherewith to give Lance Carlyon a lesson in the "_Addio del Marito_," until Captain Dering should choose to come out of the recesses of the garden and allow of their going back to the Fort together--knew of none likely to use, or even to be aware of, the balcony. So he turned thither curiously, then stood arrested, so that the clash of the foils on the stone, as he purposely lowered their points, came as a warning to those two that they were observed. Laila, with a catlike noiselessness, withdrew in a second. She, a yard or two away, in deepest shadow, stood leaning in a careless, easy attitude over the balustrade. Her only possibility of escape lay, she felt instinctively, in showing no desire to do so. Vincent, for his part, turned to face the old priest, prepared to brazen it out; for his blood was running like wild-fire in his veins. Yet scarcely so fast as the heart's blood had once leapt, and was even now leaping, in the old man who came forward, facing him also. Came forward slowly, shortsightedly, a foil in each hand. If he had held out one, bade him take the button off and fight for his life, Vincent Dering would scarcely have been surprised, would almost have been pleased. It would have raised him in his own self-esteem. For he knew perfectly well he had no right to be there; that, as yet, he was not sure of his own footing. But Pidar Narâyan did not. He paused, as he generally did, a few paces away, a slender, straight shadow in black, girt about with that pale sash, on which, and on his pale face, such light as there was fell softly. For there was no anger in the latter; only an almost passionate regret and pity. Even so, his words startled the young man, who stood prepared for defiance. "Oh! Captain Dering!" he said courteously, "it is you, is it? You have found a pleasant place, indeed! But scarcely a very safe one for your companion--" he turned to that faint gleam of white and silver in the arched shadow.--"The air grows chill, madam, so close to the river," he continued, his voice taking a tone almost of command, "and you are lightly clad. Will you not be wise, and leave us?" Vincent's surprise had passed by this time into a rush of vexation, almost indignation, for he had grasped the old man's mistake. For an instant he felt bound to undeceive him, then the impossibility of doing so held him silent, feeling a coward indeed; so, desperately, he could only join his voice to Father Ninian's. It seemed the only way out of the _impasse_. "Perhaps you had better go--"