frustrate her hopes. She looked back into the room with a shudder as
her eyes travelled over the luxurious appointments and different
objects that had become so curiously familiar in the last two months.
The unexpected equipments and the man's own baffling personality would
remain in her recollection always as an enigma that she would never be
able to solve. So much had been so inexplicable in himself and in his
mode of life. She drew a long breath and went out hastily into the
sunshine.

The horses were waiting, and Gaston was standing ready to hold her
stirrup. She fondled the beautiful grey horse's soft nose and patted
his satiny neck with a hand that trembled a little. She loved the horse
and to-day he should be the means of saving her. He responded to her
caresses, gentling her with slobbering mouth and whinnying softly. With
one last look at the big double tent and the rest of the camp behind it
she mounted and rode away without another backward glance. She had to
exercise a rigid control over herself. She longed to put Silver Star
into a hand gallop at once and shake off Gaston, but she was still too
near the camp. She must be patient and put a certain number of miles
between herself and the possibility of pursuit before she attempted
anything. Too early an endeavour would only bring the whole horde in
wild chase at her heels. The thought of the promise she had given to
the man from whom she was flying came back to her. She had promised
obedience, but she had not promised that she would not try to escape,
and, if she had, no promise wrung from her by fear was valid in her
opinion.

She rode steadily forward at a slow, swinging canter, instinctively
saving her horse, plan after plan passing through her brain to be
rejected as impracticable. Silver Star fretted continually at the