"Was it--in time?" he whispered slowly, and as she nodded with crimson
cheeks and lowered eyes he turned his head away without another word,
but a shudder that he was too weak to control shook him.

But the happiness of ministering to him passed very swiftly. As he grew
stronger he managed so that she was rarely alone with him, and he
insisted on her riding twice every day, sometimes with Saint Hubert,
sometimes with Henri, coolly avowing a preference for his own society
or that of Gaston, who was beginning to get about again. Later, too, he
was much occupied with headmen who came in from the different camps,
and as the days passed she found herself more and more excluded from
the intimacy that had been so precious. She was thrown much into the
society of Raoul de Saint Hubert. All that they had gone through
together had drawn them very closely to each other, and Diana often
wondered what her girlhood would have been like if it had been spent
under his guardianship instead of that of Sir Aubrey Mayo. The sisterly
affection she had never given her own brother she gave to him, and,
with the firm hold over himself that he had never again slackened, the
Vicomte accepted the role of elder brother which she unconsciously
imposed on him.

It was hard work sometimes, and there were days when he dreaded the
daily rides, when the strain seemed almost more than he could bear, and
he began to make tentative suggestions about resuming his wanderings,
but always the Sheik pressed him to stay.