For a moment she hesitated, knowing what awaited her, and then she leaped blindly, fell a little short, and knocked the candle from its insecure socket into the gulf beneath her. She uttered a sharp cry as she felt herself falling, and the next instant found herself dragged up in her lover's strong arms, and folded with a savage tenderness to his breast. _This_ time he held her as if he did not mean to let her go. "Hush!--you are quite safe," he whispered to her in the pitch darkness. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE DRIVE HOME. The girls were boiling a kettle and making afternoon tea, while the men were getting their horses and buggy furniture together, at about four o'clock. Elizabeth was on her knees, feeding the gipsy fire with dry sticks, when Mr. Yelverton came to her with an alert step. "I am going to drive the little buggy back," he said, "and you are coming with me. The others will start first, and we will follow." She looked up with a startled expression that puzzled and disappointed him. "_What!_" he exclaimed, "do you mean to say that you would rather not?" "Oh, no, I did not mean that," she faltered hurriedly; and into her averted face, which had been deadly pale since she came out of the cave, the hot blood flushed, remembering how long he and she had stood there together in a profound and breathless solitude, and the very blackest night that ever Egypt knew, after he took her into his arms, and before they remembered that they had a second candle and matches to light it with. In that interval, when she laid her head upon his shoulder, and he his red moustache upon her responsive lips, she had virtually accepted him, though she had not meant to do so. "No," she repeated, as he silently watched her, "you know it is not that." "What then? Do you think it is improper?" "Of course not." "You would really like it, Elizabeth?" "Yes--yes. I will come with you. We can talk as we go home." "We can. That was precisely my object in making the arrangement."