The Tigress

"And you swore you loved me?"

"I did. I do. I swear it still," he cried with sudden vehemence.

Nina laughed at his protestation.

"'Not that I loved Cæsar less, but that I loved Rome more,'" she quoted. "Is that it?"

"No, that isn't it," he denied earnestly. "I – "

"You love me a great deal, but you are so fond of Darling that you would not pain him to make us both happy," she interrupted. And the sneer with which she did it cut him to the quick.

"I don't think you've any right to put it that way," he returned.

"I am putting it your way, really," she came back. "It is as plain as the nose on your face. You made the choice between us, and you took a minute or so to make it. You didn't answer on impulse; you answered after calm deliberation. I really don't see, Gerald, how you can argue it otherwise."

"But it wouldn't make you happy," he caught her up. "You've said it wouldn't."

"Did I?" she asked indifferently. "I don't remember."

"You said it would make you miserable; that you'd never care a straw in your life except for one man. You said that you'd married a man you did not love, and that – "

She lifted a slim white hand as if to ward off a blow.

"Don't! Don't!" she cried. "No matter what I said. That was then, and this is now. Besides, I don't always tell the truth. I am not as deliberate as you are, you see. Sometimes I say things on impulse; sometimes I lie with a direct purpose. And then, that night, I was not quite myself, you know. I had had a silly dream and I allowed it to affect me."

He drew his chair nearer and bent forward. He was by no means so sure of himself as he had been a moment before. It was wonderful – those tones in Nina's voice. They swayed his feelings against his better impulses. Her voice had always been her most effective weapon. Even her beauty was secondary to it.

He was conscious that his heart was pounding. It seemed to rise up chokingly with every bound. And so he stammered:

"You – you mean – you – would reconsider?"

"Ah!" she murmured. "I don't know what I mean. Only – "

"Yes, yes," he hurried her. "Only – only – "

She turned her head aside and covered her face with the hand that had checked his arraignment.

"I am so wretched!" It was little more than a whisper.

"No, no," he pleaded. "Nina, I beg of you."

His emotion swept him away, overriding all law, vaulting honor, trampling scruples. The possibility of possession revived, and the pathetic figure of Darling was forgotten.

He reached out for her, clasped her in his long, hungry arms; and, yielding, she let him draw her close to him, her head nestling against his shoulder.

"There, there," he murmured, smoothing her cheek with a hand nearly as soft as a woman's. "I did not mean it – I swear I didn't mean it. I – I love you more than anything in life."

Her arms wound about his neck, and he drew her up again until her gaze was level with his own. But, even at that moment, he saw her eyes stray across her shoulder and then suddenly grow wide as with alarm.

He felt, too, her whole figure tense, and instinctively there was conveyed to him a contagious sense of lurking danger. He was about to speak, to question, when, between lips barely parted, breathed rather than whispered even, came:

"A cobra – in the corner – where I'm looking! The pistol – quick – and don't miss!"

The pistol lay at his left hand, and he must needs swing quite around to aim after getting it. But she slipped swiftly away from him to give him free play, and he managed it very well indeed.

In the dim light he marked the cobra instantly, for a ray had been caught by its glistening brown, upreared body, and its spread hood stood out fairly distinct against the glazed panes of the long casement which stood partly ajar.

Andrews fired, and the report echoed sharply against the dead silence of the room. But there echoed, too, two other sounds, both puzzling and disconcerting. One was a metallic ring, as of a struck gong, only sharper and shorter, and the other was a hoarse, but muffled and evidently restrained, cry of pain.

Man and woman were on their feet instantly. Three strides took Andrews to the spot, and there he halted in amaze with a little exclamation of astonishment. For the cobra had toppled over, not limp and outlying, but stiffly; its coils intact, facing him, disklike.

It was an admirably modeled bronze.

In the perplexity following the discovery he turned questioningly to Nina, who was close behind him. But she only lifted a warning finger and made a sibilant sound with her lips, adjuring silence. And he noticed, strangely enough, that the look of alarm which he had detected was – in a lesser degree perhaps – still present.

She passed him, stepping over the bronze reptile; and, spreading wider the casement, went out onto the veranda.

In the act of following, the fact of the muffled cry recurred to him. Was it possible that the bullet, ricochetting from the metal casting, had found a mark beyond the window?

With one foot across the sill a scream seemed to stop his heart from beating. Certainly it held him motionless for a second or more. Yet he recovered himself in time – just in time – to catch Nina in his arms as she staggered backward, stunned and half-fainting. Nor was it any wonder that she screamed and was stunned and half-fainted.

For fate chose that moment for making her "silly dream" come true. She had seen a ghost on the veranda.

CHAPTER IV

A White Slipper and a Red Stain

The native servants, startled by the pistol-shot, flocked in haste to the veranda. In the lead was Jowar, the Darlings' khitmatgar, whom Nina hated. And he saw her in Andrews's arms.

It was only for an instant, however. The presence of Jowar revived her like a cold shower, and she stood on her own feet with her chin in the air.

"I saw a man running," she explained. "It must have been he that shot through the window. Oh, how frightened I was!"

The khitmatgar inquired as to which way the miscreant had run, and Nina pointed in exactly the opposite direction from that in which she had been facing when she staggered back into young Andrews's embrace.

Jowar set off in pursuit instantly, and the others followed. All, that is, save Nina's ayah, who opportunely produced a bottle of smelling-salts and passed it to the mem-sahib.

Sniffing at it, Mrs. Darling dismissed her.

When Nina and Andrews were back in the drawing-room and again quite alone he saw that she was still trembling. Moreover, in spite of the ruddy glow from the single lamp in the corner, she was as pallid as ashes.

"Dearest," he murmured, hastily encircling her slim waist with a supporting arm, "you are wonderful! Any other woman would be in hysterics."

Very gently she extricated herself from his embrace.

"I haven't lived five years in India for nothing," she said.

"But what was it?" he asked. "Why did you want me to shoot? Why – "