looking down at her. Then again he stooped and
kissed her. "Good-bye, my darling," he said huskily, "till we meet
again!"

And so hurriedly, as if not trusting himself to remain longer, he left
her.

CHAPTER III

THE VICTIM OF TREACHERY

There came again the running rattle of rifle-firing from the valley
below the fort, and Muriel Roscoe, lying on her couch, pressed both
hands to her eyes and shivered. It seemed impossible that the end
could be so near. She felt as if she had existed for years in this
living nightmare of many horrors, had lain down and had slept with
that dreadful sound in her ears from the very beginning of things. The
life she had led before these ghastly happenings had become so vague a
memory that it almost seemed to belong to a previous existence, to an
earlier and a happier era. As in a dream she now recalled the vision
of her English school-life. It lay not a year behind her, but she felt
herself to have changed so fundamentally since those sunny, peaceful
days that she seemed to be a different person altogether. The Muriel
Roscoe of those days had been a merry, light-hearted personality. She
had revelled in games and all outdoor amusements. Moreover, she had
been quick to learn, and her lessons had never caused her any trouble.
A daring sprite she had been, with a most fertile imagination and a
longing for adventure that had never been fully satisfied, possessing
withal so tender and loving a heart that the very bees in the garden
had been among her cherished friends. She remembered all the sunny
ideals of that golden time and marvelled at herself, forgetting
utterly the eager, even passionate, craving that had then been hers
for the wider life, the broader knowledge, that lay beyond her reach,
forgetting the feverish impatience with which she had longed for
the day of her emancipation when she might join her father in the
wonderful glowing East which she so often pictured in her dreams. Of
her mother she had no memory. She had died at her birth. Her father
was all the world to her; and when at last he had travelled home on a
brief leave and taken her from her quiet English life to the strange,
swift existence of the land of his exile, her soul had overflowed with
happiness.

Nevertheless, she had not been carried away by the gaieties of this
new world. The fascinations of dance and gymkhana had not caught her.
The joy of being with her father was too sacred and too precious to be