Mina paused and looked solemnly at the sun now softened in its shine and hanging exceedingly low. In a moment her eyes fell again on Warner. They seemed to have absorbed radiance from what they had gazed on. Light like an arrow-point glanced in them as she said: ‘This is my time to follow. Ill not be robbed of those hours of blissful danger when I may be continually with him. My kind, noble master never likes to see my tears, and I will weep before him night and day till he grants what I wish. I am not afraid of danger. I have strong nerves. I don’t wish to fight like an Amazon; and fatigue I never felt. I will die or be with him.’ ‘What has fired your eyes so suddenly, Miss Laury?’ asked Lord Hartford, now advancing with Enara from their canopy of roses. ‘The duke, the duke,’ muttered Henri Fernando; ‘she won’t leave him, I’ll be sworn.’ ‘I can’t, general,’ said Mina. ‘No,’ answered the Italian; ‘and nobody shall force you. You shall have your own way, madam, whether it be right or wrong.’ Before Miss Laury could answer a voice from within the mansion spoke her name. ‘It is my lord!’ she exclaimed, and ran over the sward, through the porch, along the passage, to a summer parlour whose walls were painted a fine pale red, its mouldings burnished gilding, and its window-curtains artistical draperies of dark blue silk covered with gold waves and flowers. Here Zamorna sat alone. He had been writing. One or two letters, folded, sealed, and inscribed with western directions, lay on the table beside him. His gloves and cambric handkerchief with a crown wrought upon it in black hair appeared on his desk. He had not uncovered since entering the house three hours since; and either the weight of his dragoon helmet or the gloom of its impending plumes or else some inward feeling had clouded his face with a strange darkness. Mina closed the door and softly drew near. Without speaking or asking leave she began to busy herself in unclasping the heavy helmet. The duke smiled faintly as her little fingers played about his chin and luxuriant whiskers, and then, the load of brass and sable plumage being removed, as they arranged the pressed masses of glossy brown ringlets and touched with soft cool contact his feverish brow. Absorbed in the grateful task she hardly felt that His Majesty’s arm had encircled her waist, and yet she did feel it too and would have thought herself presumptuous to shrink from the endearment. She took it as a slave ought to take the caress of a Sultan, and obeying the gentle effort of his hand slowly sank on to the sofa by her master’s side. ‘My little physician,’ said he, meeting her adoring but anxious upward gaze with the full light of his countenance, ‘you look at me as if you thought I was not well. Feel my pulse.’