And did Windham perceive this? Could he help it? Could he avoid seeing the dark olive face which flushed deep at his words--the large, liquid, luminous eyes which, beneath those deep-fringed lids, lighted up with the glorious fires of that fervid soul--the delicate frame that quivered in the strong excitement of impassioned feelings? Could he avoid seeing that this creature of feeling and of passion thrilled or calmed, grew indignant or pitiful, became stern or tearful, just as he gave the word? Could he help seeing that it was in his power to strike the keynote to which all her sensitive nature would respond? Yet in all Zillah's excitement of feeling she never asked any questions. No matter what might be the intensity of desire that filled her, she never forgot to restrain her curiosity. Had she not heard before of this regiment and that regiment from the letters of Guy? Windham seemed to have been in many of the places mentioned in those letters. This was natural, as he belonged to the army which had taken Delhi. But in addition to this there was another wonder--there were those hill stations in which she had lived, of which Windham spoke so familiarly. Of course--she thought after due reflection--every British officer in the north of India must be familiar with places which are their common resort; but it affected her strangely at first; for hearing him speak of them was like hearing one speak of home. Another theme of conversation was found in his eventful voyage from India. He told her about the outbreak of the flames, the alarm of the passengers, the coward mob of panic-stricken wretches, who had lost all manliness and all human feeling in their abject fear. Then he described the tall form of Obed Chute as it towered above the crowd. Obed, according to Windham's account, when he first saw him, had two men by their collars in one hand, while in the other he held his revolver. His voice with its shrill accent rang out like a trumpet peal as he threatened to blow out the brains of any man who dared to touch a boat, or to go off the quarter-deck. While he threatened he also taunted them. "_You_ Britishers!" he cried. "If you are--which I doubt--then I'm ashamed of the mother country." Now it happened that Obed Chute had already given to Zillah a full description of his first view of Windham, on that same occasion. As he stood with his revolver, he saw Windham, he said--pale, stern, self-possessed, but active, with a line of passengers formed, who were busy passing buckets along, and he was just detailing half a dozen to relieve the sailors at the pumps. "That man," concluded Obed Chute, "had already got to work, while I was indulging in a 'spread-eagle.'" Windham, however, said nothing of himself, so that Zillah might have supposed, for all that he said, that he himself was one of that panic-stricken stricken crowd whom Obed Chute had reviled and threatened.