“Oh, let me go!” implored Georgia. “I can’t hear what you say, doctor. Dick’s voice comes in between. He wants me so much. Oh, Dick, I would come, but they won’t let me.” “This won’t do,” said Dr Tighe. “Must humour her, poor thing!” he muttered behind his hand to Mabel. “Now, Mrs North, assuming that the Major is delirious, and crying out for you----” “Torture!” interjected Georgia, in a high, hard voice. “No, no! Nonsense, nonsense! Why, it’s biting out his tongue he’d be before the devils would get a word out of him. But supposing he’s ill, now--would it be any pleasure to him to know that you had killed yourself and the child trying to get to him? You know it wouldn’t. ’Twould be a bitter grief to him all his days. And for that reason you’ll take this, and lie down quietly, and try to get some sleep.” “It won’t drown his voice,” said Georgia, accepting the medicine, but looking up with such misery in her eyes that it almost destroyed the doctor’s self-control. “I should hear that if I were dead.” “Oh, doctor,” murmured Mabel, drawing him into the outer room, “if she should be right, after all! What can we do?” He looked at her in astonishment. “My dear Miss North, you mustn’t let yourself be led away by that poor soul’s ravings. After such a happy married life as hers, it would be strange indeed if she could give her husband up for lost without a struggle. But what possible hope is there of his being alive? If he was a prisoner, don’t you think Bahram Khan would have made use of him long ago to torment us? Don’t make it worse for her by encouraging her to hope.” “No, no, of course not,” said Mabel impatiently. “But all the same,” she muttered to herself as he left her, “something ought to be done, and I know the man to do it.” Half-an-hour later she went out into the verandah to meet Fitz Anstruther, who had come as usual to inquire after Georgia and the baby, and beckoned him to a secluded corner, where two packing-cases served as seats. “Do you know,” she said eagerly, without giving him time to speak, “I am beginning to believe that Dick is really alive. Georgia is so absolutely convinced he isn’t dead, and I can’t think she is altogether mistaken. Is there no way of finding out?” “You don’t mean by making inquiries, surely? The Amir certainly believes he is dead, and Bahram Khan chooses us to think that he does too, so we should get no good out of them.” “Yes, I quite see that, but what I have been thinking is that some one to whom he had been kind may have hidden him away--in a house in the mountains, or one of the camps of the wandering tribes--and he may be lying there ill all this time.” “I only wish he might, but in that case I’m afraid it would simply be his death-warrant if we found out where he was. Bahram Khan would still be between us and him, you see.”