I've sent word to Mrs. Doyle. I've ordered your
milk-punch too, and now I think I'll make my salad. You never saw me make
a salad," he added, smiling. "I've done some successful operations in my
day; I've played about with bones and sinews, proud of my work sometimes,
but the making of a perfect salad is the proud achievement of a
master-mind." He laughed like a boy. "'Come hither, come hither, my
little daughter, and do not tremble so,'" he said so cheerfully as to be
almost jeering.
His cheerfulness was not in vain, for a smile stole to her lips, though
it only flickered for an instant and was gone. For all that, he knew he
had saved the situation, and that another chapter of the life-history of
Orlando and Louise had been ended. A fresh chapter would begin tomorrow;
but sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof.
CHAPTER XII
MAN UNNATURAL
Mazarine discovered the flight of Louise soon after she had gone. He had
not been five hundred yards from the house since she returned with
Orlando after the night spent upon the prairie, save when he had been
obliged to go in to Askatoon and had taken her with him, dumb and
passive. She had been a prisoner, tied to the stirrups of her captor; and
he had berated her, had preached at her. As Louise had said, once on the
way to Askatoon, he had even tried to make her kneel down in the dust of
the trail and plead with Heaven to convict her of sin.
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