"How did you know where we were, and why did you come?" she said, after
they had got under way, having secured the horses which Sheila and her
mother had ridden.
Briefly Dyck explained how as soon as he had dealt with the revolt of the
Maroons at his own place he came straight to Salem.
"I knew you were unused to the ways of the country and to our sort of
native here, and I felt sure you would not refuse to take help--even mine
at a pinch. But what happened to you?" he added, turning to Sheila.
It was only yesterday Sheila had determined to cut him wholly out of her
life by assenting to marry Lord Mallow. Yet here he was, and she could
scarcely bear to look into his face. He was shut off from her by every
fact of human reason. These were days when the traditions of family life
were more intense than now; when to kill one's own father was not so bad
as to embrace, as it were, him or her who had killed that father. Sheila
felt if she were normal she ought to feel abhorrence against Dyck; yet
she felt none at all, and his saving them had given a new colour to
their relations. If he had killed her father, the traitor, he had saved
themselves from death or freed them from a shameful captivity which might
have ended in black disaster.
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