'_Shot himself!_, The words came back to her in a sort of cry. '_Shot himself!_ What do you mean? What does she mean?' Gwen stood as if petrified before those regretful faces. Then, as the truth struck at her, beating down her shield of self-deception, she turned at last, forgetful of all else, to the shelter of Dan's kind arms. 'Dan! Dan! it isn't true--it can't be true! say it isn't true.' He drew her closer to him, looking down into her agonised face with a perfect passion of tenderness and kissed it; forgetful in his turn, of everything save that she had come to him at last. 'It is true, my darling; he did it to save me and you. Gwen! Gwen! it wasn't your fault--My God! she has fainted!' 'I'm sorry,' began Rose, feeling paralysed by surprise, but Dan's kind smile was ready even in his distress. 'Don't worry. It's best over, for I must have told her. You see we have been engaged for years, and George knew it. If I carry her to your room, Miss Rose, she will be better there. 'Tis the shock, and she was so fond of him, dear heart.' Lewis Gordon, left alone in the verandah while another man before his very eyes carried off the woman to whom he supposed himself to be engaged, felt that the world had broken loose from its foundations altogether. So that was the explanation! And then a low murmur of moaning from the potter arrested his attention, which, as is so often the case after a shock, had lost its airt and become vagrant. The old man, still crouched beside the fragments of the Ayôdhya pot, was rocking himself backwards and forwards, and muttering to himself, 'She will be angry; the Mâdr-mihrbân will be angry, and then Azîzan will not sleep.' Lewis walked up to him and laid his hand reassuringly on the thin, bent shoulders. 'I don't think the Mâdr-mihrbân will be angry. I'm almost sure she won't.' His own words made him smile, until, as he looked at the old man's shifty, bright eyes raised to his doubtfully, he remembered the young sad face which George had painted. 'And Azîzan is asleep,' he said gently; 'she will not wake again.' As he stooped to gather up the jewels his eyes were dim with unwonted tears--why, he scarcely knew. When Rose came back ten minutes after, leaving Gwen to Dan's kind consolations, she found Lewis leaning over the railings looking at the rain lilies through his eyeglass as if it had been a microscope. He turned to her with the air of a man who has made up his mind. 'You thought I was engaged to my cousin, Miss Tweedie,' he said. 'So did I. Apparently I was mistaken. So let us set that aside, once and for all, and think over more important matters. There is no lack of other surprises, thank Heaven.'