A turn in the road through the jungle shut out the sight of the huge animals behind them, and Noreen breathed more freely.  She began to wonder who her rescuer was and how he had come so opportunely to her relief.  Their dramatic meeting invested him in her eyes with more interest than she would have found in any man whose acquaintance she had made in a more unromantic and conventional manner.  And so she bestowed more attention on him and studied his appearance more closely than she would otherwise have done.  He struck her at once as being exceedingly good looking in a strong and manly way.  His profile showed clear-cut and regular features, with a mouth and chin bespeaking firmness and determination.  His face in repose was grave, almost stern, but she had seen it melt in sudden tenderness as he sprang to her aid when she had felt faint.  She noticed that his eyes were very attractive and unusually dark—­due, although she did not know it, to the Spanish strain in him as in so many other Irish of the far west of Connaught—­and with his darker hair, which had a little wave in it, and his small black moustache they gave him an almost foreign look.  The girl had a sudden mental vision of him as a fierce rover of bygone days on the Spanish Main.  But when, in a swift transition, little laughter-wrinkles creased around his eyes that softened in a merry smile, she wondered how she could have thought that he looked fierce or stern.  Although, like many of her sex, she was a little prejudiced against handsome men, and he certainly was one, yet she was strongly attracted by his appearance.  Probably the very contrast in colouring and type between him and her made him appeal to her.  He was as dark as she was fair.  And when he was standing on the ground she had seen that he was well above middle height with a lithe and graceful figure displayed to advantage by his careless costume of loose khaki shirt and Jodpur breeches.  The breadth of his shoulders denoted strength, and his rolled-up sleeves showed muscular arms burned dark by the sun.

“How did you manage to come up just at the right moment to rescue me?” she asked.  “I have not thanked you yet for saving me, but I do so now most heartily.  I can’t tell you how grateful I feel.  I am sure, no matter what you say, that those elephants would have killed me if you hadn’t come.”

Dermot laughed.

“I’m afraid I cannot pose as a heroic rescuer.  I daresay there might have been some danger to you, had I not been with them.  For one can never tell what elephants will do.  Out of sheer nervousness and fright they might have attacked you.”

“You were with them?” she echoed in surprise.  “But you said that these were wild ones.”

“So they are.  But this animal we are on is a tame one and was captured years ago in the jungle about here.  I think he must have belonged to this particular herd, for they accept him as one of themselves.”

“Yes; but you?”