“I’m an unfeeling idiot! Lean on me, please.” He supported her gently across the intervening space, and found a seat for her on a fragment of rock, in a nook which furnished a partial shelter from the sun and the whirling sand. She made room for him beside her, but he persisted in tramping up and down, his face twitching painfully. “I can’t stay quiet!” he cried, in answer to her remonstrance. “When I think it’s just a chance--a mercy, Mrs North would say--that you’re not--not--” he skipped the word--“at this moment, it knocks me over. And all my fault!” Mabel’s renewed protest was cut short by the appearance of the two grooms, who ran up with scared faces, and inquired dolefully which way the horses had gone, and whether the Presences would wait where they were until the missing steeds had been captured and brought back. “Why, what else should we do?” asked Fitz, calm enough now in the presence of the alien race. His own groom hastened to reply that Dera Gul, the ancestral stronghold of Bahram Khan, was only a bow-shot off, and that there the Presences might find rest and refreshment. “Not if I know it!” was Fitz’s mental comment. “It’s a blessing that the principal villain himself is away at Nalapur, but we won’t trespass on the hospitality of his vassals in his absence. We will wait here,” he added to the servant, who replied sullenly that his honour’s words were law, and departed with his companion in search of the horses. “What was he saying?” asked Mabel curiously. “Oh, only gassing a little about the neighbourhood,” replied Fitz, who had had time to decide that he would not alarm his charge by telling her exactly where they were. It did not occur to him that the uneasiness with which Bahram Khan’s glance had inspired Mabel three days before had resolved itself into a sense of offended pride at what she took to be a premeditated insult, and that no idea of any danger to herself personally had ever entered her mind. He did his best, therefore, to divert her thoughts from the question of the locality, and was congratulating himself upon his success when a little procession appeared round the corner of the cliff in whose shadow they were sitting. The principal figure was a sleek and shining Hindu, swathed in voluminous draperies of white muslin, with occasional glimpses of red brocade, who advanced with profound obeisances, and entreated the exalted personages before him to honour his master’s roof by deigning to rest under it until their horses were found. This time Fitz could not but refer the suggestion to Mabel, and he found to his surprise that she was inclined to accept it. “I shouldn’t care to meet Bahram Khan,” she said; “but he is away, you say.” “When did the Prince start for Nalapur?” asked Fitz of the Hindu. “Three days past, sahib--the same evening that he was present at the _tamasha_ at Alibad.”