Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/267

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the climb and the excitement of the moment which had just passed.

Could the man be as cool as he looked? As unmoved by her presence? by the fact of their aloneness—with her husband a mile in one direction helping Eleanor to re-do her spiral puttees (if Sir Brian could have known just what George was doing at that moment!) and with Charlie Hickson and Ralph and Rose clambering somewhere over that fall of rock two miles away where the Englishman had pointed them out to her through his glasses? Would she not have been less than woman if, under such circumstances, Fay had not dropped her eyes in sudden embarrassment and asked herself that question, her bosom heaving with something besides the exertion and the altitude? With wild, rugged nature all round them, and with lofty mountains challenging to boldness, would it not be surprising if she did not find out very soon the answer to her curious craving to know? . . .

They did not get a shot at the sheep.

Presently Sir Brian was helping her down the rock as unostentatiously courteous and apparently as composed and reserved as ever, but—she had found out!

Fay was girlishly happy, enjoying the novel experience of a hunt in these magnificent wilds amazingly, but on the night of this very day when she had found out about Sir Brian her