He drew his brows together: "Did you try?"

"Did I try! Of course, at once--yesterday. Did I not promise?" The

girl was reproachful. "She forbade me ever to speak of it again."

Raymond Bethune folded his arms, leaned them upon the balustrade, and

turned a set profile towards the low hanging moon.

"Then I must try again," he said, after a pause.

Aspasia wished him to succeed; but something relentless in his looks

filled her with a sort of fear of him, of pity for her aunt. He seemed

as indifferent to human emotion, as immutable, she thought, as one of

the stone gods that, cross-legged and long-eyed, in unfathomable inner

self-satisfaction, had gazed forth from their niches in the temple walls

below for unknown centuries upon the passing mortal throng.

Suddenly he turned and left her. Sir Arthur was now pacing the terrace

with the globe-trotter, lucidly laying down the law of India, as

interpreted by his own sagacity, his smouldering cigar making ruby

circles in the night with every wave of an authoritative hand.

The second secretary, Mr. Simpson to wit, was sitting by Lady

Gerardine's side, effusively receiving each indifferent phrase that

dropped from her lips. As Major Bethune advanced towards them the young

civilian rose and drew away, with a crab-like movement, in the direction

of the abandoned Baby.

Lady Gerardine clasped her hands together on her knees; the contraction

of her heart, at this man's approach, painted her face ashen even in the

pallid light. He took a seat--not Mr. Simpson's lowly stool, but one

that placed him on a level with her; and then there came a little pause

between them like the tension of the elements before the break of the

storm. She had successfully avoided him the whole evening; but now she

felt that further evasion was useless; and she waited, collecting her

forces for the final resistance.

He went straight to the point:

"I hope you have reconsidered yesterday's decision. Perhaps you do not

understand that this is a question of duty with me, of conscience."

He was trying to speak gently.

"You have no responsibility in the matter," she answered.

"I cannot accept that point of view," he said, flashing into icy anger.

She did not reply in words, but rose with a swift haughty movement,

unmistakably showing her resolve of closing the discussion once and for

ever. But in an instant he was before her, barring her way.

"Major Bethune," she exclaimed, "this is persecution!"

The blood rushed to her cheeks, her eyes flashed. For an instant she was

roused to superlative beauty. Stronger became his conviction that here

must be more than mere heartless caprice. Something of her emotion

gained him.

"If you would only give me a reason!" he cried.

"It is impossible," she answered quickly. "Is it a thing to be asked

for so easily, this raking up of the past? The past! is it not dead?

My God--it is dead! What if I for one will keep it so?"

"That is no reason," he said cuttingly; "it is hardly an excuse."

She passed by him with long swift steps and a rush of silken draperies.

And thus, once more baffled, Baby found him, stonily reflecting. She

stopped, promptly discarding her meek admirer.

"No success?"

"No success."

"You had better give it up," said Aspasia.

"I was never more determined not to give it up."

Baby looked exceedingly sympathetic, fluffy, and engaging: something

like a sweet little night-owl, with her round wide eyes and her

pursed-up mouth. He suddenly caught one of her hands and held its soft

palm closely between his own lean ones:

"Miss Cuningham," he said in an urgent whisper, "I know you can help

me."

She stared at him. It would almost seem as if this strange being could

read her vacillating thought. He saw her hesitate and bent to look into

her eyes, while the pressure of his hand grew closer.

"And if you can help me, you must. Remember your promise."

"Well, then," the girl became suddenly breathless, as if she had been

running. She looked round over her shoulder: "I know it's beastly mean

of me, but, there--you have only to make Uncle Arthur take it up...."

"Ah!" The teeth shone out in his dark face. "I understand. Thank

you."

But Baby was already gone. With crimson cheeks and a deep sense of

guilt, she was running hastily away from the starry terrace and the

great mysterious, jewelled Indian night, into the lighted drawing-room.

Here Lady Gerardine was quietly seated alone by a green-shaded lamp,

reading her favourite Thoreau. She looked up and smiled at Aspasia's

flurried entrance, marked the quivering, flushed face.

"My dear," she exclaimed, with a vague amused laugh, "what has happened?

Don't tell me that you have had to box George Murray's ears again!"

George Murray was Sir Arthur's first secretary, a young gentleman with a

weakness for the fair sex, whose manners and morals had (in spite of M.

Châtelard's theories of Western immunity) been considerably affected by

the lax atmosphere of India. Aspasia had found it necessary, more than

once, to put him in his place; and on the last occasion had confided to

her aunt, with a noisy sigh, that if the Leschetizky method was to fail

in the glorious musical results for which she had once fondly hoped, it

had at least had the advantage of singularly strengthening the muscles

of her arm.

She now stretched out her fingers, and, half unconsciously sketched a

buffet in the air; then she shook her head:

"Oh, no, indeed! He has not looked the same side of the room as me

since Saturday."

"Poor man, I am not surprised!"

"Serve him right!" said Aspasia, indefinite but vindictive.

"It is not Mr. Simpson, surely?"

"Simpson?" echoed the girl, with supreme contempt, "that little worm!"

"Who is it, then? For something, or some one, has upset you."

"Oh, I don't know! It's Major Bethune, I think. I don't believe he's

canny. He has got such queer eyes."

Then, thinking she saw her aunt shudder, she gave her a remorseful hug

and flew to the piano to plunge into melodious fireworks.

With a sigh as of one oppressed, Lady Gerardine took up her book again

and endeavoured to absorb herself. For years she had successfully

cultivated the faculty of leading her mind into peaceful places; but

to-night there was no wandering forth with Thoreau's pure ghost into the

whispering green woods he loved. Stormy echoes from the past were in her

ears; relentless hands were forcing her back into the arid spaces where

dwelt the abomination of desolation. Everything seemed to conspire

against her, even Aspasia's music.

The girl's fingers had slid into a prelude of Chopin, and the familiar

notes which she had been wont to reel off with the most perfect and

heartless technique were now sighing--nay, wailing--under her touch.

"Stop!" exclaimed Lady Gerardine, suddenly springing to her feet. "Oh,

Baby, even you! What has come into your music to-night? You have

betrayed me!" she said, and bursting into tears, hurried from the room.

The girl's hands dropped in consternation from the keys. Never had she

heard before to-day that ring in her aunt's voice, that cry of the soul.

She did not dare follow the flying figure. "_You have betrayed me!_"

... Little, indeed, could the poor soul guess how completely she had

been betrayed.

*CHAPTER V*

Dr. Châtelard expressed his desire to accompany the officer of Guides

upon his homeward walk. It was part of his programme to study the

lesser as well as the great. And, having to his satisfaction completed

his psychological analysis of a ruler in chief, he told himself that

half a page or so consecrated to one of the pawns in the great chess

game of empire would not be without entertainment to his

readers--especially as in the lean taciturn Scotsman he believed to have

lighted on the _type le plus net_ of the "Anglo-Saxon" soldier.

With this idea in view he had watched his subject with the keenness of

the collector already some time before his departure, and had been

interested in a little scene between host and guest. With a purposeful

yet respectful stride, Bethune had approached the Governor and addressed

him in an undertone. Sir Arthur had listened and responded with

urbanity and condescension. Whereupon the officer had bowed in what

seemed grateful acknowledgment; and, as he had turned away, the astute

Frenchman had thought to read upon his countenance, saturnine as it was,

a certain unmistakable satisfaction.

Therefore, when they started on their way down to the town, the

traveller could think of no better topic for opening the conversation

with his dissimilar companion than praise of the official who had

evidently just granted him some important request.

"A charming personality, our host, is he not?"

"No doubt."

Bethune's tone was discouraging--but these _diables d'Anglo-Saxons_ (as

M. Châtelard knew) wanted drawing out. So, undauntedly genial, he

pursued:

"And one of your great politicians, _hein_? The square man in the

square place, as you say."

This being a mere statement, Bethune did not feel called upon to reply;

and M. Châtelard, amazed at a silence which he, with subtlety,

interpreted as hostile, was fain to exclaim:

"Is it possible you do not think so?"

"I do not feel myself competent to judge," said Raymond Bethune.

"My faith," thought the other, "we do not make great progress at this

rate. Let us try something more intimate. At least, my young friend,"

he went on aloud, "you have, I trust, yourself no cause to be

dissatisfied with his Excellency. Some little demand you made of him

to-night, did you not? Some matter concerning career, advancement?"

"My career, my advancement, are quite independent of Sir Arthur

Gerardine's influence."

M. Châtelard pondered; was there not certainly something more than

British reserve in the almost resentful tone--some deep-lying grudge

that it would be piquant to find out?

"Why, then," he cried, with much artful artlessness of candour. "Why,

see how one can deceive one's self! Just now I would have sworn, from

your attitude, despite your national phlegm, that you had solicited and

been granted some personal favour."

"A personal favour, yes. Nothing connected with my service."

"A personal favour, _hein_?"

"If indeed you would reckon it a favour--a mere act of justice I regard

it."

"Indeed, my dear sir, an act of justice?"

"The whole affair is one that could not interest you, M. Châtelard."

"My dear young man, all interests me. It is my trade to be

interested--always."

They had reached the end of the palace grounds; and, by the lights of

the flaring booths that were plastered against the walls, Bethune halted

a second to survey the shrewd, kindly, expressive countenance, quivering

with eager curiosity, at his shoulder.

His own features relaxed with that twinkle of the eyes which was his

usual approach to a display of amusement. After all, why should he not

gratify this note-taking traveller with his tale? There was no mystery

about it; and a plain statement of the situation might serve to put in

order his own ideas which had been troubled by Lady Gerardine's

unreasonable and unexpected attitude.

"My business with Sir Arthur to-night is soon told----" He broke off

abruptly. "You are, I understand, a sedulous observer: did you happen

to take any note of her Excellency the Governor's wife?"

"Did I take any note of----" the sentence escaped M. Châtelard in a

breathless way--as if the words had been knocked out of him--and ended

in a little squeak. He drew back one step and contemplated the younger

man in silence for a perceptible moment. "Did I notice her Excellency?"

he repeated then, in elaborately natural tones. "Why, my dear fellow,

it would mean having no eyes not to notice her--one of the most

beautiful women it has ever been my good fortune to see! In fact,

to-night, still under the influence of the look in her eyes, I should

say, my friend, _the_ most beautiful! Lucky dog (as you say) your

Governor!"

Bethune threw away the match with which he had been lighting his cigar

and blew a contemptuous puff.

"Before she married Sir Arthur," said he, "she was the wife of a comrade

of mine. It is my desire, it is my intention, to write the life of that

comrade. I require the co-operation of Lady Gerardine. She refused it

to me. I went to Sir Arthur."

"You went to Sir Arthur," repeated the Frenchman, in tones of one almost

stunned with amazement.

"Yes," answered the officer, gravely. "To make her accede to my

request."

"And he----"

"Oh, he has promised to see that she does so at once."

For a while M. Châtelard was fain to proceed in silence, words failing

him before so extraordinary a situation. As he went he regarded the

Englishman with ever-increasing respect, admiration, not to say

enthusiasm.

"_Voilà qui est raide ... voilà qui est fort!_" he was saying to

himself. "Was I not right to tell myself that there was something truly

remarkable about this young man? What a drama! What could not our

Balzac have made of it! The well-conserved--but elderly, yes, elderly

husband; the young, lovely, bored wife--ah, but she bores herself, the

young wife! And then this young, handsome, sinister officer who has

known her before, loved her it is clear from the first--the wife of his

comrade! He comes to her with a plan ... a plan of an astuteness to

deceive an angel. But the woman who loves is never deceived. Because

she loves him, she reads his heart. Virtuous, she refuses.... They are

both young, she knows her weakness. She bores herself, yes, she bores

herself, but she refuses. And he, what does he do, the young, silent,

determined adorer? My faith, it is the simplicity of genius: he goes to

the old husband, that the old husband may order her to yield to his

scheme. And the husband--and this is the strangest part of it all--what

does he say? Oh, it is simple, simple in the extreme. He promises to

do so at once. What a story! And my friend here, under the starlight,

qualifies it in three words: 'No favour--justice.' It is of a cynicism!

Yet yonder he stands, as grave and cold as a judge. Poor Sir Gerardine.

But here is a young man who will make his way--and, for the

psychologist, what a study!"

"My faith," said he aloud, "but you have courage, sir."

"Courage?"

"Ah, you thought I did not notice Lady Gerardine! I will tell you

something--as one man to another--she is one who will not make her

lover's task easy to him, nor amusing, hey! With her it will be all or

nothing: the grand passion. Ah, my gallant friend, believe the word of

one who has had experience in these matters! Avoid the grand passion,

for it's what makes cinders of our manhood."

It was Bethune's turn to halt amazed.

"I beg your pardon," he exclaimed. "But are you warning me against

falling in love with Lady Gerardine?" Then, overcome with the humour of

the idea, he threw back his head and gave vent to his short laugh.

In this laugh, however, M. Châtelard's acumen was pleased to discover a

concentrated bitterness; in the touch upon his arm, a menace to the

interferer.

"Nay, heaven forfend!" he cried, dropping the personal tone with a hasty

return to natural good-breeding. "It only struck me, sir, that your

programme was a little dangerous. And for one like myself, who has made

a study of women, Lady Gerardine is a type--a type rare, fortunately,

perhaps, for the peace of the world, but, heavens, of what palpitating

allurement when one does come across it!"

"A type of a very selfish woman," said Bethune, shortly. And this time

the physician was not far wrong in noting bitterness in his tone. "As

cold as a stone, I should say, and as self-centred as a cat."

"Self-centred, I grant you. But cold?" screamed the Frenchman.

"As cold at heart as she is white in face," said Harry English's

comrade.

"White? so is the flame at its intensest! Cold? With that glow in her

hair? With that look in the eyes--those lips? Touch that coldness and

you will burn to the bone. Ah, it is not the old husband that will feel

that fire! But the fire is there, all the fiercer for being

concentrated. Ah, when she lets herself go, her Excellency, it will be

terrible--it will be grand! There are conflagrations which make the very

skies grow red."

"My way branches off here," interrupted Bethune, drily, "and yonder are

the lights of your hotel. Good night."

He shook hands loosely, and was gone before the globe-trotter,

interrupted in full eloquence, had had time to lay hold of his formal

French manner for the farewell ceremony.

"I have pressed him a little too closely," he thought, as he stood

watching the soldierly figure swing away from light to darkness, down

the narrow street dotted with gaudy booths. "He is already on the fatal

slope.... I must not let the end of this drama escape me."

Raymond Bethune, as he strode along, laughed to himself at "the French

Johnny's" nonsense. Nevertheless a phrase or two seemed to circle in his

mind round the baffling image of his friend's widow like a flight of

birds round the head of a sphinx: "White? so is the flame at its

intensest. Cold? Touch that coldness and be burned to the bone...."

*CHAPTER VI*

The walls of Lady Gerardine's room glowed like the page of an old

missal, with carmine and cobalt blue, with beetle-wing purples and

greens. It was a columned and arched apartment in the wing of the

modernised palace which yet remained as the last dusky prince had left

it. Here Sir Arthur's improving hand had been so far stayed.

Lady Gerardine sat in silence while the ayah brushed her hair. Though

no word had passed between them, the woman, inarticulately, as a dog

may, felt that her mistress's heart was troubled. And, while her dark

fingers moved among the gleaming strands, they trembled a little with a

vague anxiety. Jani had been Rosamond's first and only nurse. It was to

the faithful breast that had practically given her life that the young

widow had clung in the hour of bereavement. This creature, who could

not reason but only feel, had been then the sole presence she could

endure. To the house of altered fortunes, from comparative poverty into

the almost queenly state of Lady Gerardine, the woman had accompanied

her mistress, rejoicing; bringing with her the same atmosphere of

unreasoning, almost animal devotion.

How much did she understand, this secret, dark-minded, dark-faced old

Hindoo? More, perhaps, about her white child than Rosamond knew

herself! But her theories of what was good for her mistress had not

changed since the days when she had ministered to her with gaudy toys,

scraps of gilt paper, and luscious Indian sweets.

* * * * *

Sir Arthur's step, the resonant step of the master, rang on the marble

without. The ayah imperturbably continued to wield her brush. The

faint tension that came over Lady Gerardine's figure was familiar to

her, but evoked no sympathy; children and women know not what is their

real good, in the Hindoo's opinion; the Lieutenant-Governor was a great

and good lord, and her Ladyship's jewels were even nobler than the

Ranee's.

"Tired, Rosamond?" cried Sir Arthur, breezily. "I was sorry, my dear,

that you could not wait to bid good night to our guests. But I made it

all right; I made it all right. Another time, love, you will consult

me, before retiring. Governor's wife, you know ... _noblesse oblige_,

eh? Well, well, let it pass! My dear child, the garden window open upon

you, at this hour! We shall have you down with fever as sure as fate."

He clucked disapprovingly. "Will you never learn sense?"

Rosamond stood up.

"Pull the blinds, Jani."

She came forward into the centre of the room, so strange a presence,

with the long yellow tresses, the white skin, the tall proportions of

her northern womanhood, in this haunt of oriental splendour, still

peopled, one would think, with the small ghosts of bygone brown

beauties.

Through the door left open by Sir Arthur the sound of the fountain

playing in the great inner baths fell soothingly on the ear. A breeze

gently swayed the scented matting blinds to and fro and brought in gusts

of Eastern airs to their nostrils, spiced, heavy, dreamy. From below,

where lay the town, rose rumours of revel--the poignant twang of the

ghitern, the plaint of the reed, the dry sob of the tom-tom. The whole

atmosphere within and without was an appeal to the emotions, to the

senses; the very touch of the night wind a velvet-soft caress. A night,

surely, when but to be alive was in itself a boon; when to be young and

beautiful should mean joy. The appeal of it clamoured to Rosamond

Gerardine's dormant soul, troubled this day to the core of its

self-imposed slumber by the insistent voices of the past. She turned

cold with a stony prescience of evil. If she might not sleep through

life, then must she wish herself dead.

"I am very tired," she said to her husband, with a note of unconscious

pleading in her voice. "I am going to bed; excuse me to all our

guests."

"Oh, every one has gone!" said the Lieutenant-Governor.

He threw himself luxuriously upon the settee and stretched his arms over

the piled cushions with the gesture of the man at home in his wife's

room.

"Sit here, dear."

She took place beside him. He lifted a coil of her hair and played with

it admiringly. The ayah drew back into the arched recess of the window

and stood immobile, the silver brush gleaming in her dark hand.

"Bethune tells me, Rosamond," said Sir Arthur, rolling the soft hair

round his finger, "that he wants you to help him with a life of poor

English." Rosamond looked at her husband, the light of pleading in her

eyes died down into dull misery. "I understand, dear, that you have

made some objection; but, as I have said to him, it is our duty, my dear

Rosamond, our duty, to see that the memory of the poor fellow should get

proper recognition. A very distinguished young soldier," said Sir

Arthur, with benevolence, "it would certainly ill-become me to put any

difficulty in the way. So I have promised----"

She started away from him with an involuntary movement; the twist of

hair in Sir Arthur's fingers plucked her back. She gave a cry:

"Oh, you have hurt me!"

He was full of solicitous apology; kissed her hand, patted her head.

But she, still drawing from him, gazed at him with the eyes of a woman

in fever.

"You have hurt me," she repeated, in a whisper.

"Of course," proceeded her lord and master, with fresh gusto, "I can

quite understand, dear, that you should shrink a little from the

business. It would naturally be a slightly painful one. Your social

duties occupy you a good deal, and----" he tenderly pulled her ear, "you

have not much inclination for literary labour, have you? Therefore, my

love, overworked as I am, I have resolved to take the matter into my own

hands. In fact, I have actually promised Major Bethune that I will be

responsible for the task."

"You!"

Her pale lips laughed silently.

"Yes, I myself." He rubbed his hands and nodded. "I shall make the

time, my love."

"You?" she repeated, and rose stiffly to her feet. "No."

"My dear Rosamond!"

It had come upon her, after all. Here would no refusal serve her any

more, no strength of determination, no piteousness of pleading. Before

this smiling self-confidence of will what resistance could avail? It is

the relentless trickle that wears the stone.

"No hands but mine, at least. No eyes but mine!"

"My dear child!"

"One would have thought that my wishes would be paramount in the matter;

but you drive me, all of you. Have your way."

"You amaze me--this is childish, unreasonable!"

She stared vacantly before her.

"Kismet!" she said. "It is fate--I will do it."

"I have never heard such nonsense in my life."

"But at least," her eyes shot flame upon him, "let no one talk of laying

a hand upon these things. Good God, they, at least, are mine!"

Sir Arthur rose also, too bewildered still to be able to grasp the full

measure of the offence.

"You are certainly very strange to-night, Rosamond," he exclaimed with

testy anxiousness. "Not yourself at all. I feel convinced you have a

touch of fever."

He stretched out his fingers for her pulse. Quickly she evaded his

touch.

"Write to that man," she said, enunciating her words with painful

distinctness, "tell him that he has gained his point."

Ignoring the unbecoming and extraordinary situation of having a command

issued to himself in such imperious tones from his wife's lips, Sir

Arthur moved in high dudgeon towards the door.

"I insist upon your taking an effervescing draught at once. And

to-morrow I shall certainly call in Saunders to see you. Jani, your

mistress must go to bed."

The door fell back. Rosamond sank down once more on the settee and sat,

with her elbows on her knees, her chin on her clasped hands, staring at

the marble floor, long, long into the night, while Jani waited and never

even moved a finger.

*CHAPTER VII*

If sleep came at all to Rosamond that night, it came with no refreshment

of forgetfulness, but rather with an increase of inner struggle. Hour

merged into hour until even the noisy Indian town fell into some kind of

silence; but the voices in her troubled soul ceased not their clamour.

Why should she be made to do this thing, she who had asked so little of

life; who had, indeed, deliberately fashioned life for herself so that

it should give her but one boon--quietude? Her pulses throbbed as if

with that fever which the solicitous husband had prognosticated. How

dared they?

Then, reason took the cold grey eye, the cold reproachful tone of Major

Bethune, to ask her, Had she the right to refuse? And fate seemed to

assume the kindly handsome smiling countenance of Sir Arthur, to assure

her that it must be. Who knew as well as she that it was vain to

struggle against any fiat of his? And then, once more, every fibre of

her being, every energy of her soul, started in revolt.

The tom-tom beat below in the town a mocking refrain to her anguish.

And, without the walls, the pariah dogs howled and fought, snarling, and

wrangled, growling. She slid into snatches of horrid slumber, in which

the contending elements in her soul seemed to take tangible form. But

with the dawn a change came upon her. She awoke from one of these

interludes in which she had after all glided to unconsciousness; the

tension had become relaxed; there was one clear purpose in her mind:

She would not do it!

Reason now no longer appeared under an enemy's shape, but came like a

friend to her pillow and whispered words of soothing. They had no right

to ask it of her. No power on earth could force her to it. All that the

world had the claim to know about Harry English, his comrades, his

friend, those that had been beside him in his glorious fight against

destiny, could give to it. What concerned the man, apart from the

soldier; what concerned that inner life, had been hers alone. What

sense of justice could there be in the demand that she should break

through the deliberate seal of years, stultify the intention of a whole

existence, at the bidding of an overbearing young man, of a pragmatic

old one? Once, for a little while, life had held for her mysterious

possibilities--sweet, but no more unfolded than the bud in the narrow

sheath. Was she now to tear apart these reserves, close-folded, leaf

upon leaf, dissect the "might-have-been" till her heart's blood ran?

No, a hundred times! And then, upon the strength of this decision, the

habitual long-cultivated calmness came floating back to her. She lay

and gazed at the shafts of light as they filtered in through the blinds

and fell in crosses and bars upon the marble floor. From their first

inroad, when they had seemed but the laying of shadow upon shadow, to

the awakening of colour in and under them, she watched them with

wide-open yet dreamy eyes.

All the night she had battled with the nightmare horror. Now, with the

dawn, came peace: not the peace of acceptance, but cessation of feeling.

She mused and pleasured her mind on the mere feast of sight, as, bit by

bit, in the familiar places, the tints of her wonderful missal-page room

returned to existence for her eye; here the turquoise-blue inlay, with

its cool stripe of black and white, there a lance of rose-crimson on the

tesselated wall, glowing like the dawn itself amid the surrounding

gloom. Across the light shafts of the garden window, there was a dance

of flickering leaf shadows. And this greenness set her mind wandering,

not in the over-luxuriant, untranquil, full-blossomed Indian garden, but

into cool dim English spaces--into some home wood where harebells grew

sparsely and the dew glittered grey on bramble-brake and hollow; where

last year's leaves lay thick and all the air was full of the scent of

the honest, clean, wholesome soil of England.

And as she dreamed her placid waking dream, morning life in the

Governor's palace began to stir about her. Already from the town below

the too brief hour of stillness had been some time broken. But these

outlandish sounds: the cry of the water-carriers and camel-drivers, the

jingle of cow-bells, the blast of the shepherd's horn, the brazen gong

of the temple, had not really broken in upon her thoughts: they had

formed rather a background, vague and distant, haunting the sweetness of

her far wanderings.

Now, however, as the house itself became awake, creepingly, with

slinking feet, she called upon sleep again for fear once more of what

the day would bring her.

* * * * *

One came and bent over her, holding his breath. And she feigned

unconsciousness. And then she heard him withdraw on exaggerated tiptoe.

And next entered the ayah with her tea--Jani, the ayah, who flung wide

the windows on the garden side.

Early as it was the lilies were throwing up incense to the rising

sun-god; it gushed into the room as upon the swing of a censer. And,

turning her languid eyes, Rosamond saw how, in the fresh little breeze,

the great green banana-leaves waved to and fro across her window against

a sky of quivering silver.

When Jani returned to the bed, Rosamond handed her the empty cup with a

smile. But as Jani took it she looked at her mistress keenly; and,

after a second or two, stretched out a stealthy hand and touched the

forehead under the masses of golden hair, still heavy, from the

night-sweat. The fair brow was cool enough --there was no trace of the

ever-dreaded fever in the encircled eyes or on the smooth white face;

only the weariness of a long night-watch. But Jani shook her head to

herself as she withdrew with her tray; and, meeting Miss Aspasia at the

door, she was all for forbidding her entrance. But that young lady was

not of those who are turned from their path.

"Don't be a goose, Jani!" cried she, briskly. "If you can see Aunt

Rosamond, why should not I?" She ducked nimbly under the white-draped

forbidding arm, as she spoke. "And she is not a bit asleep; her eyes

are as wide awake as anything."

Too strainedly awake, one more versed in the reading of the human

countenance might well have deemed. But the last thing Aspasia sought

in life was its subtlety. Rosy and fresh from her bath, her crisp hair

crinkled into tighter curls than ever and still beaded here and there

with the spray of her energetic ablutions, as she stood in the square of

green light, wrapping her pink cambric dressing-gown tightly round her

pretty figure, she was as pleasant to look upon as an English daisy.

Lady Gerardine smiled more brightly.

"It's a glorious morning, Aunt Rosamond. Are not you going to ride?"

"Not this morning."

"Aren't you well?" Aspasia sat down on the side of the bed and took her

aunt's hands into her firm grasp. There was a conscience-stricken

anxiety in the girl's eyes.

"Quite well; but I slept badly."

Baby felt the beat of a slow pulse under her fingers. Relieved but still

weighted with a sense of guilt, she bent to kiss the face on the pillow.

Lady Gerardine turned her cheek with that tolerant submission to caress

that she was wont to display. Then she drew her hands away and gently

pushed Aspasia from her.

"Go and dress, you will be late. And tell your uncle that I am trying

to sleep."

Still Aspasia hesitated. She would have liked to confess her last

night's treachery and be forgiven. But Lady Gerardine, who was never a

very approachable person, seemed this morning more distant than ever.

And catching sight of the dancing leaves outside, the girl felt the joy

of the young day suddenly seize her spirit. She shuffled gaily across

the room in her heel-less slippers.

"I'll tell Runkle you're sound asleep and he must not disturb you," she

announced with cheerful mendacity, "otherwise you'll have him prowling

in and thrusting that thermometer down your throat."

Lady Gerardine laughed a little, but made no protest.--That thermometer!

Then she turned her head and fell to watching the garden window again,

glad when across the open spaces she heard at last the crisp repeated

rhythm of the horses' feet draw close and ring sharp, as the cavalcade

moved up the road by the garden walls, and drop away in the distance.

* * * * *

When Aspasia returned from her ride she found her aunt seemingly in the

same attitude; the long white hands folded, she could have sworn,

exactly as she had last seen them; the deep-dreaming eyes still gazing

out of the window.

"I declare," cried the girl, "you lazy thing!" but there was still a

shade of uneasiness in her voice and in her glance. "Are not you

ashamed of yourself?"

"Not at all," said Rosamond, "I've had a very happy time. And you?"

"Hot, hot," said Aspasia, flinging her Panama hat across the room and

rubbing her forehead. Her cheeks had grown pale and there were moist

dark rings round her eyes.

"I have had the better part, I think," said Lady Gerardine.

"Not you," said Baby, as she dumped her solid weight on her favourite

corner of the bed. "It's been delightful, delicious. I've never

enjoyed a ride so much." Her bright hazel gaze misted over in

remembrance. "Oh dear," said she, "how can you lie there! You're quite

young, Aunt Rosamond, but I think your idea of happiness is like a

cat's. You just like to sit still and blink and think. And even the

cats romp about--at night," she added, parenthetically.

"Oh, I don't even think, or care to think much," said the other in that

indulgent half-playful manner which she reserved for her niece, to whom

she talked more as if she were five years old than eighteen. "While you

were out I let my soul swing on that great green leaf over there by the

window. Do you see it, Baby? It is beginning to catch a ray of

sunlight now and shines like a golden emerald."

"Gracious!" cried the girl.

"I think it is partly," said Rosamond, pursuing her own thoughts,

"because of this vivid passionate land, where every one lives so

intensely. No wonder, poor things, their ideal of complete happiness

over here is Nirwana! I am glad, Baby, that we shall soon be in our

placid England again, where people go from the cradle to the grave,

quietly as along a grey road green-hedged, from a cottage gate to a

sleeping churchyard."

"I am glad, too, we are going to England," cried Aspasia, catching up

one phrase of her aunt's speech and neglecting the main idea. "I met

Major Bethune, this morning," she said, half-bashful, half-defiant, "and

he's going home on leave, too."

Lady Gerardine's eyelids drooped, just enough to veil her glance. She

lay quite still, without even a contraction of the fingers that rested

upon the sheet. Baby peeped at her in a sidelong, bird-like way, and

felt inexplicably uncomfortable. She babbled on, stumbling over her

words:

"He was riding such a brute of a horse, and sat it like a centaur--or

whatever you call the thing. You never saw such an eye as the creature

had; one of those raw chestnuts, you know, with a neck that goes up in

the air and seems to hang loose. And he sat, just with the grip of his

knees, you know. He is as thin as--as----" Simile was not Aspasia's

strong point; she broke off. "You are not listening to a word I am

saying." She swung her legs pettishly, in the short linen habit.

"I heard," said Rosamond, without lifting her eyes. "I heard very well."

"I'll go and take a bath," said Aspasia, sliding off the bed, and

pausing for the expected protest. Aspasia's habit of plunging into

water four or five times a day was a matter of perpetual household

objurgation.

"Yes--I'm simply made of dust!" She moved towards the door. Still her

aunt lay, fair and white and still. It seemed to the girl, scarcely

even breathing.

"Do you know, Runkle's new secretary has come. The famous new Indian

secretary--the pure native spring, you know," she cried, with a childish

effort at dispelling that uncanny supineness. "He gave me an awful

fright."

The long drooped lids flickered with a swift upward look of unseeing

pupils.

"Fright! Why?"

"Oh! I don't know. It was fearfully silly of me. As I was coming along

your passage, just now, I saw a hand hold back the curtain for me. I

thought it was that Simpson. And as I bounced through I nearly fell

into his arms--and found it was a black man--ugh! The famous new

secretary, in fact. He stood like a stock, and I squeaked in my usual

way. And then he smiled. I don't like Indians much, but that's a fine

handsome fellow. Looks like a Sikh--I'm boring you. I'm off. Lord,

here's Runkle! Runkle, I'm going to have a bath."

She turned with gusto to fling her little glove of defiance afresh in

the new-comer's face--and this time was not disappointed of the effect.

"My dear Aspasia!"

"Only number two!"

"It's not that you've not been warned...."

The wrangle of words rose in the air, to end in the inevitable mutual

iterations: "Don't say you've not been warned, my dear Aspasia," and

"Don't care, Runkle, I'm going to have a bath."

"I am afraid Aunt Rosamond's not well," was Aspasia's somewhat spiteful

parting shot, as she slipped out behind the door hangings.

"Not well!"

With his short quick step Sir Arthur came to the bedside.

"Would you mind," said his wife, "getting Jani to pull the blinds again;

the light is growing too strong!"

She wanted the shadows about her, for the struggle was coming, and she

felt in her heart that she was doomed to lose. Sir Arthur attended to

the detail himself, then hurried back.

"Fever? No." Even he could scarcely insist upon this with his stubby

finger upon that pulse, the pulse of a life that found itself just now

an infinite fatigue. "Below par! I wish, dear, you would for once pay

some attention to what I say. It is not that I have any desire to find

fault with you, my love, but how many times must I represent to you that

it is important to get the early freshness of the day in this climate,

and take your rest later?'

"Yes," said Rosamond.

She lay waiting for the dreaded blow to fall. It was not long delayed.

"It is high time, indeed, that we should all have a change," pursued the

Lieutenant-Governor.

He still held her hand in his and looked down complacently to see how

white it lay, in the shaded room, upon his broad palm: how slight a

thing, how delicately shaped, with taper fingers and filbert nails. The

great man had chosen her in the zenith of his life and success because

of her beauty. She had little birth to boast of, and no fortune. But

it pleased him at every turn to trace in her those points which are

popularly supposed to belong only to the patrician.

"It is high time," said Sir Arthur, turning the passive hand to gaze at

a palm no deeper tinted than is the pale blush of mother-of-pearl, "that

we should get back to England for a while. And, by the way, that young

man, Bethune of the Guides, poor English's friend--you know, my

love--has dear Aspasia told you? We met him this morning; he is also

going to travel home very shortly."

"So Aspasia told me."

"I have advised him to wait for our boat. A good plan, don't you think?

We could be talking over that biography together--_pour passer le

temps_--eh, my dear?"

"_Pour passer le temps._"

"Yes. I informed Major--ah--Bethune, that you had some idea about

preferring to do this little matter yourself. As I said to Bethune: 'I

am willing to undertake it for her; but in this, she must be free--quite

free.'" He paused upon the generous concession. Her lips moved.

"What did you say?" he asked.

She had but repeated, in the former mechanical manner: "Quite free."

Now, however, she altered her phrase. Through all the clamour of the

inner storm there had pierced the consciousness of his irritable

self-esteem on the verge of offence.

"Thank you," said she.

"I am particularly anxious," resumed Sir Arthur, squaring his fine

shoulders and inflating his deep chest, "that there should be no hitch

in this affair. It would ill become me, as I said to Bethune, me of all

men, to place any difficulty in the way of a memorial to poor English.

I am sure you understand me in this, my love!"

He bent his handsome grey head and kissed her hand with a conscious

old-world grace. The sentiment he was delicately endeavouring to convey

was truly a little difficult to put into definite language; and Sir

Arthur had too much tact to attempt it. It might be transcribed thus:

"If that excellent young man, your first husband, had not so obligingly

left the world, I should not be standing in this present satisfactory

position with regard to yourself." And if he were grateful to Captain

English, how much more so ought she--Lady Gerardine--to be on the same

account? He was a little shocked that she should not have shown more

alacrity to do justice to the worthy fellow's memory.

"Well, my dear," said Sir Arthur, jocosely, after a pause, "I must not

waste much more time in this flirtation. I have a busy morning before

me. A very busy morning." He drew a long breath, to end up with a

satisfied sigh. "And, by the way, my new secretary has come. A capable

fellow he seems! Quite extraordinarily well educated. Speaks English

perfectly. Caste business will be a bit of a nuisance, of course. Will

have to feed apart, and all that nonsense. Strange creatures, are not

they? But he's worth it. Well, we shall see you at tiffin."

The observation was an order, and Rosamond assented to it as such.

Short of actual illness, when the precautions surrounding her would have

been of the most minute, not to say wearisome nature, the wife of the

Lieutenant-Governor was expected to fulfil the duties of her state of

life to the last detail.

"And it's quite settled," added Sir Arthur, lightly, "that you intend to

supply the material Bethune requires yourself."

She sat up in bed, with a sudden fierce movement. And, catching her head

in her hands, turned a white desperate face upon him.

"Yes, yes," she cried, "Oh God, yes!"

Sir Arthur was amazed. So much so, indeed, that even as last night,

amazement superseded his very natural vexation.

"Why, Rosamond! Really, my love. I am afraid, my love, that Aspasia is

right, that you are not well. This is the second time in twenty-four

hours that you have answered me in this--in really, what I may

call--quite with temper, in fact. I'm afraid, dear, that you cannot be

well. I shall certainly request Saunders to look in this evening."

Lady Gerardine fell back upon her pillow, and then, lifting the heavy

mass of her hair, swept it across her face like a sheltering wing, as

if, even in the dim room, she could not endure the gaze of human eyes

upon her. Sir Arthur, for all his science of life, could not but own to

himself that he was nonplussed. He shrugged his shoulders.

Fortunately, sensible men were not expected to understand the whims of

the charming but irresponsible sex. Rosamond was evidently not the

thing, and therefore was to be indulgently excused. In spite of which

philosophic conclusion his attitude towards his secretaries and other

subordinates that morning was marked with unwonted asperity.

"Something's turned our seraphic old ass a trifle sour," Mr. George

Murray remarked to his junior, with a grin.

* * * * *

Under the veil of her hair Rosamond would have called, if she could, on

all the shades of the world to come and cover her; would have gladly

sunk under them, away from the light of life and the pain of living,

somewhere where all would be dark and all quiet, where she might be

forgotten--and allowed to forget.

*CHAPTER VIII*

"Jani," said her mistress, "bring me Captain English's box!"

The ayah stared as if she could not have heard aright. There followed a

strange oppressive silence, in which the lapping of the waters in the

inner marble spaces seemed to take whispering voices of amazement. Then

Lady Gerardine, standing straight and impassive by her dressing-table,

her head just turned aside from the reflection of her own beauty,

repeated her order in the same hard, uninflected tone.

"Captain English's box; bring it to me."

Jani looked sharply up at the speaker's face and clapped her hands

together with the wail of the children of her race when sudden trouble

comes upon them.

"Ai, ai!"

"Go," said Lady Gerardine.

Grudgingly Jani turned to obey. She went, muttering to herself, groping

in her soul for the reason of this strange and most unexpected order--an

order so out of keeping with the whole tenor of her mistress's life,

that it rang in her ears like a menace of calamity.

* * * * *

It was a small thing enough, a common battered tin box, to rank with

such importance. But it held tragedy: more than tragedy, a woman's

murdered youth. Well did Jani remember the day it had come back to the

little home, up in the hills--all that was left to them of their

handsome young lord. They could not carry Rosamond back her dead; what

soldier's widow can hope for that last tragic comfort? But the few

tangible traces he had left behind him; these were hers by right, and to

her they were brought, with scarcely less reverence than if they had

been his honoured remains--the journal he had kept for her during yonder

endless months of siege; the letters he had written her, never to post;

his notes; sundry trifling belongings, marked with that poignant

personal touch which seems to inflict the hardest pain of all.

One can kneel in uplifted resignation beside the awful grandeur of the

soul-abandoned clay. But the old pipe, burned down on one side, the

worn glove ... over these trivial relics the heart breaks. Rosamond

English, in her nausea of misery, her rebellion against the unaccepted

unrealisable sorrow, could not look at them, could not touch the poor

memorials. She thrust them back into the battered box away from her

sight, and with them all the garnered treasures of her brief girlhood

and of her briefer wifehood: the simple keepsake, the dried

flowers--sprig from her wedding bouquet, bridal wreath--the letters to

the betrothed, the first letters to the wife. Things of no worth, yet

full of hideous potentialities of grief: symbols of what had been, what

might have been. "Away, away with them!" cried her sick heart, "out of

my sight for ever!"

And now she was to break open the coffin to look upon the horror of the

murdered thing that was her youth; she who had nailed it down so fast,

buried it so deep!

Jani laid the box at her mistress's feet and loosened the cords slowly

and with protest.

"Go, leave me now," said Rosamond, "and let no one disturb me. Leave

me!" she ordered sharply, as once more the ayah hesitated. And Jani

slunk away, dragging noiseless feet, her dim mind filled with

inarticulate foreboding.

Rosamond drew a long breath as the hangings fell. Surely, surely, if

there be anything to which one has a right, in this grinding world, it

is to be alone with one's dead!

* * * * *

She took the key from where she had herself placed it ready to her hand

on the table: a black rusty thing amid all the jewels and costly

trinkets which it was Sir Arthur Gerardine's pleasure to provide for the

adornment of the most beautiful of all his attributes--his wife. She

knelt down and inserted it in the lock; and then she paused, passing her

hand across her damp forehead.

Inexorable fate! She for years had walked in the company of some

creature of horror, the face of which had been mercifully veiled; she

had carried a mortal anguish cunningly lulled to sleep. Now her hand

must lift the veil.... Now no opiate would further serve her: she must

face the pain.

For a moment yet she hesitated: the last recoil of the flesh. Then the

courage which despair or resignation lends--that rise of the spirit to

meet the inevitable which seldom fails even the lowest human being at

the end--brought back strength sufficient. She turned the key, drew out

the rusty hasp, and opened the casket of her dead past.

* * * * *

The breath that rushed at her from the gaping box seized her by the

throat. The unfading scent of the faded orange blossom; the very

atmosphere of the lost presence, of the tobacco he had been wont to use,

of the Russian-leather pocket-books she had given him; a faint, faint

whisper of the English lavender her hands had been so careful to set for

him, since he loved it. And, over all, through all, some odour of the

siege: of strife, fever, bloodshed, and death--eastern, indescribable,

terrible! Her soul sickened away.

No, the past was not dead! It had but lain in wait for her all these

years. It had but gathered force to spring upon her in the fated hour.

None can escape destiny. Here was the cup she had refused to drain;

here were the tears of which she had cheated her heart; here, even, was

the intensity of her lost youth, that she might mourn the husband of her

girlhood as it had been written she must mourn.

She rose to her feet. A cry rang in her ears like the cry of an animal

hurt; and she never knew that it had come from her own lips. Through

gathering mists she saw Jani reappear and run towards her; and,

summoning all her failing energies in one supreme effort, she called out

in distinct tones:

"Close the box and let no one touch it."

Then she fell like a mown lily, straight and long, beside it.

*CHAPTER IX*

For thirty-six hours the unconsciousness for which she had longed

cradled Rosamond, and when she came to herself it was slowly and with

dimness. Three times, indeed, did day and night slip by her in her

darkened and silent room before she even began to wonder how it was she

should be left in such peace. But upon the fourth dawn, as the sun set

to work to paint once more the jewel glories of her walls, memory came

back upon her like a torrent.

She sat up, wildly crying:

"Jani, the box! What have they done with the box?"

The ayah's arms were round her in a second. Jani whispered and soothed

her mistress as, long ago, she had soothed her nursling. Safe was the

mem sahib's box; no one should lay finger on it but herself. But the

mem sahib must be good and sleep, for Jani was by her. And Rosamond let

her head rest gratefully upon the wasted bosom that once had held such

loving bounties for her, and from thence slid back upon her pillows into

forgetfulness again. She was weary still, with a great and blessed

weariness.

* * * * *

Dr. Saunders paid brief daily visits. In Sir Arthur's opinion he was

inclined to make culpably light of the whole affair--to allow those

unimportant fever cases in the compound to weigh against the

indisposition of the Lieutenant-Governor's wife.

It is a notable fact that the medical man treats the feminine syncope as

not calling for much notice. And though the excellent Scot conceded

that there might be some shock caused by the fall, to account for the

prolonged unconsciousness, he declined to admit to Sir Arthur there was

ground for anxiety or to recommend any treatment but quiet--absolute

quiet. The preliminary symptom of irritability towards himself which Sir

Arthur commented upon as extraordinary and alarming, Dr. Saunders in so

many words declined, as a waste of time, even to discuss.

Nevertheless, as days succeeded each other and the patient's languor,

not to say apathy, continued unabated, Dr. Saunders abruptly changed his

tactics and informed his Excellency that he had better lose no time in

sending his wife home.

"Pack her off," he said brusquely.

"Pack her off!" The choice of words was as unfitting as the idea they

embodied was distasteful.

"I thought," said Sir Arthur, loftily, "that you were aware, Dr.

Saunders, of my intention of progressing homewards next month."

"Well, I should pack off Lady Gerardine by the next boat," said the

doctor, no whit abashed. "There's a good deal of sickness about, and I

should not like to take the responsibility of keeping her on here in

this condition. She's in a queer low state--damn queer low state, Sir

Arthur."

Sir Arthur puffed an angry breath down his nostrils and fixed a

withering gaze on the other's dry, impassive countenance.

What sort of a physician was this who, having charge of the precious

health of such a distinguished household, could allow one of its most

important members to get into a damn queer low state and then brazenly

announce the fact? Sir Arthur, a spot of red anger burning upon each

cheekbone, gave Dr. Saunders clearly to understand how grossly he had

failed in his post of trust, and announced his own intention of

procuring higher opinion without delay. Whereat the doctor shrugged his

shoulders and drove off in his little trap at break-neck speed, as

philosophically as ever.

The higher medical opinion was procured. And though it was enveloped in

phraseology better suited to the patient's distinguished station, it was

substantially the same as the first--with the single difference that it

seemed to take a more serious view of the case. Lady Gerardine was once

more ordered home with the least possible delay, this time under

penalties so obscurely hinted at as to seem far more alarming than the

most explicit statement.

Sir Arthur's irritable anxiety caught fire again. He hastened the

departure with as much energy as he had hitherto displayed in

repudiating the idea. Truth to tell, no prescription could have well

been less pleasing to him. Precluded himself by public business from

leaving before his allotted time, not only would his stately "progress"

home be sorely shorn of its chief adornment, but the visit of his

distinguished relative, Lady Aspasia Melbury, would have to be

unceremoniously postponed. Moreover, it was never part of his views of

the marital state to allow his beautiful wife to remove herself more

than a day's journey from his personal influence. Scornfully as he

would have repudiated any suggestion of jealousy (and indeed, as Aspasia

had asserted, he was perhaps too vain a man to entertain so unflattering

a guest in the complacency of his thoughts), he had, whether from long

residence in the East or natural disposition, an almost oriental manner

of regarding the wife as an appanage to the man's estate--a satellite,

pleasing and brilliant enough, but yet a mere satellite in the greater

luminary's orbit of glory. And therefore, while feverishly speeding the

necessary preparations, he could not but let it be seen that he was

disappointed, not to say hurt, that there should be any necessity for

them.

Lady Gerardine showed herself as gently indifferent to reproach as she

had been to solicitude. But the physician's wisdom was so far justified

that, from the moment she was told of his decision, she roused herself

and began to take some interest in life again.

"Home," she said, "England! Oh, I am glad!"

And, by-and-by, when she was alone with Aspasia, she began, to the

girl's delight, to discuss plans with quite an eagerness in her weak

voice.

They were in a long cool room, one of the bygone zenana apartments

preserved practically untouched, which opened upon the one side into the

garden through the arches of a colonnade, and was secluded even from

that quiet spot by marvellous stone lacework screens, each different

down to the smallest detail of design, yet all in harmony. However the

small dusky Eastern beauties may have rebelled in their day against

these exquisite prison walls; the present Northern mistress of the

whilom palace found pleasure in their very seclusion, their apartness;

and, according to her wont, she feasted her soul lazily on their

artistic perfections.

She was stretched on a highly painted Indian couch which had been

converted into a sofa, and let her eyes wander from the carving of the

window screens themselves to their even lovelier reflections, cut in

grey shadow on the white marble of the pavement. From the inner rooms

the waters of the baths played murmurous accompaniment to her thought

and her interrupted speech. Aspasia, squatting on the rug at the foot

of the couch, listened, commented, and suggested.

The latter had not yet quite overcome her horrified sense of guilt in

connection with Lady Gerardine's singular breakdown. Without being able

to piece together any reasonable explanation of late events, she felt

instinctively that here was more than met the eye; that there was in the

web of her aunt's life, so to speak, an under-warp of unknown colour and

unexpected strength; that behind the placid surface there lay secret

depths; and that her own trifling treachery had unwittingly set forces

in motion with incalculable possibilities. She had gone about, these

days, with a solemn look--a living presentment of childish anxiety. The

scared shadow was still on her pretty face as she now sat in attendance.

"Home in six weeks..." said Rosamond, dreamily. "We shall still find

violets amid the dark-green leaves, Baby, and brown and yellow

chrysanthemums on the top of their frost-bitten stalks."

"And is it not jolly," said Aspasia, hugging her knees, "to think that

we can go and paddle about in the wet as much as ever we like, without

any one after us! And isn't it delightful to be going off just our two

selves. Oh! Aunt Rosamond, you gave me an awful fright, you know; but

really it was rather well done of you, to faint off like that. You see,

the doctor says, whatever they do, now, they're not to contradict you.

If ever I get an illness I hope it will be that sort. It is worth

anything to be leaving Runkle behind."

Rosamond did not answer, unless a small secret smile in her pillows

could be called an answer.

"I don't suppose," proceeded Baby, emboldened, "that you have ever been

free from the dear Runkle for more than three days at a time since you

married him."

The phrase being a mere statement of fact, it was again left without

response.

"And really," pursued Aspasia, warming to her subject, "the way he

pounced upon us last summer up in the hills was enough to ruin the

nerves of a camel. No sooner gone than he was back. Positively one

would rather have had him at home the whole time!"

Force of comparison evidently could no further go. Lady Gerardine gave

one of her rare laughs. Baby's face was all wrathful gravity.

Poor Sir Arthur! Disciplinarian as he was, he failed to inspire his

immediate circle with anything like average respect. It was a study in

morals to watch the rapidity with which the first awe of some newly

joined member of his English staff, the flattered reverential

fascination produced by early intercourse with the great man, gave way

to the snigger, the jeer, the grudging submission. But, serene in his

own consciousness of power and his own heaven-born gift of applying it,

Sir Arthur laid down the law smilingly and inflexibly; and the native

world about him, at least, bowed to his rule with impassive face and

supple back. And, if there were any symptoms of that mutiny which his

niece declared a long continuance of his rule must inevitably foster, it

is quite certain that he would have refused to believe in it until the

rebel's knife was actually at his throat.

"Ah," cried he, coming in upon them at the sound of his wife's laugh,

"that's better! I thought we should soon have you on the right road

when Sir James took you in hand."

Sir James's harmless ammonia mixture, orange-scented, differed as little

from Dr. Saunders' sedative drops as the pith of his flowery advice from

the latter's blunt statement. But Dr. Saunders was in deep disgrace,

and would probably remain so until the Governor's next colic.

Lady Gerardine's face had instantly fallen back to its usual expression

of indifference.

"I hope you weren't listening," cried Aspasia, pertly, "we were just

saying what a bore you are."

Sir Arthur laughed again, very guilelessly, and stooped to pinch her

little pink ear.

"I have wired to Sir James to have his opinion upon the best resort for

you in England, until my arrival, dear. His answer has just come."

He spread out the flimsy sheet and ran his short trim finger along the

lines: "'Decidedly Brighton, Margate, or Eastbourne.' It is evident he

thinks you require bracing."

"I have quite decided where I am going," answered Lady Gerardine,

turning her head on her cushion to look at him.

"Eh?" cried Sir Arthur, scarce able to believe his ears.

"I have been unable to talk business, hitherto," proceeded his wife,

gently. "But I wanted to tell you I have decided: I go to Saltwoods."

"To Saltwoods?" His eyes were fixed, protruding, in displeased

amazement.

To Saltwoods, that paltry little Dorsetshire manor-house which, by the

recent demise of Captain English's mother, had devolved upon his young

widow! The Old Ancient House, as it was invariably called throughout

the countryside, set in such preposterous isolation that the letting of

it on any terms had ever remained an impossibility--the legacy was by no

means acceptable to Sir Arthur. The various sums that he had already

had to disburse for its upkeep and repairs had been a very just

grievance with him; and one of the many matters of business he had

resolved to accomplish on his return to England was the sale, at any

loss, of this inconvenient estate.

"I mean to go there," said Lady Gerardine in the same tone of delicate

deliberation, but sitting up among her cushions and pushing the hair

from her forehead with the gesture that he had already learned to regard

with some dismay as indicative of "her nervous moments." "Old Mary, the

housekeeper, can easily get in a couple of country girls, and that will

do for me and Aspasia very well."

"Preposterous! Now that's what I call perfectly idiotic! I don't want

to find fault with you, my dear girl, and of course you've been ill and

all that. But it's quite evident you are not yet in a state to see

things in their right light. 'A case of sudden neurasthenia upon a

highly sensitive organisation,' as Sir James says."

This was certainly a more suitable definition of her ladyship's malady

than the "damn queer low state" of Dr. Saunders; and Sir Arthur rolled

it with some complacency upon his tongue.

"There, there, we won't discuss the matter any more just now. Rely upon

me to arrange all that is necessary in the most suitable and

satisfactory manner." He drew a carved stool to the head of the couch,

and possessed himself of her hand in his affectionate way. "There,

there, she must not be worried!"

Across the fatigue of Lady Gerardine's countenance came an expression

that was almost a faint amusement, tempered with pity. Aspasia

watching, very demure, mouse-still, from her lowly post, found the

situation one of interest.

"You are always kind," said Rosamond then; "but I shall be better at

Saltwoods than anywhere. You forget that I have work to do."

"Work?" echoed Sir Arthur. He drew back to contemplate her uneasily;

positively this sounded like wandering.

"It was your wish," she continued (could there lurk in that soft voice

an undertone of resentment?), "that I should ... look over"--she

hesitated as if she could not pronounce her dead husband's name and

remodelled her phrase--"that I should assist Major Bethune with his

book."

"Ah!"

Sir Arthur remembered. But the proposition was none the less absurd.

That Lady Gerardine, too delicate to be able to remain with him--with

him, Sir Arthur, the Lieutenant-Governor, at a moment when a hostess was

eminently needed at Government House--should be taking into her

calculations the claims of so unimportant a personality as that of poor

dead and gone English, was, for all his consciously punctilious chivalry

towards his predecessor's shade, a piece of irritating feminine

perversity that positively stank in Sir Arthur's nostrils. He snorted.

For a moment, indeed, he was really angry. And the sharpness of his

first exclamation brought the blood racing to Aspasia's cheeks. She

hesitated on the point of interference. But the invalid's unruffled

demeanour made no demand upon assistance. Suddenly realising himself

the unfitness of his tone towards a neurasthenic patient of highly

sensitive organisation, Sir Arthur dropped from loud indignation to his

usual indulgent pitch:

"See, my love, how perverse you are. First, when it seemed a mere

matter of justice to poor English's memory and could have been

accomplished with a very trifling expenditure of trouble, you were

opposed to the matter. And now, when, as Sir James says, it is so

important for you to have absolute rest, to put even your ordinary

correspondence on one side, you tell me, childishly, that it is my wish

you should _work_! I hope, I hope," said Sir Arthur, appealing to

space, "that I am not an unreasonable man."

"I was wrong," said Lady Gerardine; "I do not intend to do it because it

was your wish, but because it is now mine."

Once again Sir Arthur paused for want of the phrase that would lit his

sense of the extraordinary attitude of his wife and yet not induce any

recurrence of the dreaded symptoms. Then a brilliant solution of the

difficulty flashed across his mind.

"I will write and inform Major Bethune of the necessary postponement of

the whole affair. And now, not a word more."

Lady Gerardine smiled, but it was with lips that were growing pale.

"I have myself written to Major Bethune," said she. "It is all settled.

He will be travelling by our boat and will come to me at Saltwoods as

soon as I am ready for him."

She sank a fraction deeper among her cushions as she spoke, and a blue

shade gathered about her mouth and nostrils. Aspasia scrambled to her

feet in time to arrest the storm that was threatening in clouds upon her

uncle's brow.

"For Heaven's sake," she cried, "hold your tongue and go away, Runkle.

You'll kill her!" She dived for the smelling-salts and shrieked for

Jani. "Good gracious," she rated him, holding the bottle with pink,

shaky fingers to the waxen nostrils, "after all the doctors said, and

everything!"

Sir Arthur retired, remarkably crestfallen, to his study. How was a man

to exercise the proper marital control upon the marble-white obstinacy

of a fainting woman?

Neurasthenic shock was a very fine diagnosis. But it was a question,

after all--he lit his cheroot--whether a "damn queer state" did not more

aptly picture the actual condition of affairs.

* * * * *

The receipt of a letter from Lady Aspasia Melbury was the first drop of

balm in his Excellency's unwontedly distasteful cup. She pooh-poohed

his old-fashioned suggestion that the hostess's enforced absence

necessitated a postponement of her visit--announced her arrival at the

prescribed time, and her conviction that she and her cousin would get on

"like a house on fire." Such being the great lady's opinion, the great

man was delighted; and, before many further hours had gone by, the

younger and less important Aspasia, with hardly suppressed giggles,

heard him hold forth at the dinner table to the following effect:

"What my wife requires really is absolute country quiet. I have

arranged that she should pass her first weeks in England at her own

little place in Dorsetshire, a charming old manor-house. She naturally

does not wish to see much society till my return; and, anyhow, there is

a small piece of work which she is undertaking at my suggestion." Here

he whispered audibly to the General--his guest of the evening: "Poor

English, you know--a little biography we are getting up about him. He

was killed, you remember, in that Baroghil expedition."

"Umph, yes; I remember, Inziri Pass--seven years ago, nasty business,"

grumbled the General, as he guzzled his soup; and Aspasia's eyes danced

and her cheeks grew pink with suppressed laughter. Young Simpson thought

she was laughing at him, and became abjectly wretched for the evening.

* * * * *

Having re-established his supremacy to his own satisfaction, Sir Arthur

took an enormous interest in the protocol of his wife's departure. As

he himself intended to accompany her to Bombay--he was to meet Lady

Aspasia at an intermediate town on her May north--all the pomp and

circumstance in which his soul delighted was to grace the occasion: the

escorts, the salutes, the special trains, and so forth. Finding that

Major Bethune was bound by the same boat, he annexed him to his

"progress," with a condescension peculiarly his own. "He is engaged in

some literary work, at my request. A very good kind of fellow; very

intelligent, too," he explained.

And so Raymond Bethune found himself one of the Lieutenant-Governor's

brilliant retinue that autumn evening of the departure. "A silent,

unemotional man," Sir Arthur might have added to his description, had

he, in his own sublime content, ever thought of examining the

impressions of others.

Yet, under his impassive exterior, Raymond Bethune was conscious of a

keener interest than he had felt these many years. But it was not in

the smartness of the Lieutenant-Governor's escort, in the gorgeousness

of his equipages or the general splendour of the magnate himself that he

found food for speculation; it was in the personality of Sir Arthur's

wife--a repellent yet fascinating enigma. His thoughts perpetually

worked round it without being able to solve it.

In another manner, a sweet, vague stirring of his being--totally new

experience this!--the girlish presence of Aspasia filled his mind also

to an unacknowledged degree. He felt as if his life had been caught up

out of its own vastly different course and suddenly intertwined with

that of these two women; the one whose every action, every word, was

mysterious to him; and the other, clear to the eye as running water,

child-heart, child-soul, impulse elemental, nature itself from her

spontaneous laugh to her frank impertinence.

"Do you know," whispered Aspasia to him, as they stood side by side

under the great colonnade waiting for their turn to descend to the

carriage, "I have been hating myself ever since I was such a beast about

poor Aunt Rosamond. I think it has half killed her, this business.

Even the Runkle wants her to give it up while she's so ill."

The man's eyes had been lost in a musing contemplation of the rosy

pointed face surrounded by diaphanous folds of grey gauze. A dainty

figure was Aspasia in her soft greys--the sort of travelling companion a

man might gladly take with him through the arid and dusty journey of

life. But at these words his singular light gaze kindled.

"Surely," said he, "you do not connect Lady Gerardine's illness with

anything that you or I have done? That would be absurd, in the

circumstances"--he threw a scornful glance about him--"too absurd a

proposition to be entertained for a moment." ("This sensibility in a

woman who has consoled herself so quickly and to such good purpose!" he

added to himself.)

"Oh," said Aspasia back, in a brisk angry whisper, "you don't

understand, and neither do I. But I feel, and you don't ... and I think

you are perfectly hateful!"

She had caught his look, followed his thought, and was indignant.

* * * * *

And now out into the divine Indian evening they set. The travellers,

with their crowd of attendants, moved of necessity slowly, for Lady

Gerardine went upon her husband's arm, in the languor of the

semi-invalid. Through the frowning gateway, down the stairway they

passed, to halt again before the last flight of steps, Rosamond drew

herself away from Sir Arthur's support, leaned up against the rough

stone slabs of the wall, and laid a slender gloved hand absently in one

of five prints that mark it.

"Do you see those?" cried Baby turning, all her ill-humour forgotten in

her desire to impart a thrilling piece of information to Major Bethune

as he walked behind her. "Do you see those funny marks? Those are

supposed to be made by the hands of the queens, when they came down to

be burned. Ugh! I say, Aunt Rosamond, are not you rather glad you are

not an ancient Indian princess, and that Runkle is not an old rajah, and

that you've not got to look forward to frizzle on his pyre?"

"You forget," came Rosamond's dreamy voice in reply, "I should not have

been alive to grace Sir Arthur's pyre. My ashes would have mingled with

other ashes long, long before.... Oh, I'm not so sure," she went on,

again fitting a delicate hand into the sinister prints, "I am not sure

that it was not a kind law in the end."

"Gracious!" cried the irrepressible Aspasia, with a shriek and a laugh.

And then she whispered, all bubbling mischief, into Bethune's ear: "The

poor Runkle, he is not as bad as all that, after all!"

Then, at sight of his face, she suddenly fell grave; and the two stood

looking at each other. Bethune had first been startled by Lady

Gerardine's look and accents even more than by the words themselves.

The next moment, however, he mentally shrugged the shoulder of contempt.

Whom did she think to take in by her affectation of sensibility, this

languid, self-centred creature in the midst of her chosen luxury?

Thus, when his eyes met Aspasia's, they were sad with the scorn of

things, sad for the sordid trickeries of the soul of her on whom the

love of his dead friend had been lavished.

Sir Arthur, with touching unconsciousness of the interlude, was once

again affectionately sustaining his wife. Then, as the procession moved

on once more, Baby, troubled and discomfited--she could have hardly

explained why--moved childishly close to Raymond Bethune, and shivered a

little.

"I am glad to be getting away from this haunted place and this uncanny

country," she whispered again. "I feel sure I should have ended by

making one of these dreadful natives stick a knife into me. I am always

plunging in upon their feelings and offending their castes, and all the

rest of it. Just look at Saif-u-din's face--Runkle's new secretary--I

never saw such a glare as he threw upon us all just now. I suppose he

thought we were making fun of their precious suttee!" Aspasia's idea of

native distinctions was still of the vaguest.

Bethune turned the keen gaze of the conscious dominator upon the man

that Aspasia had indicated with her little indiscreet finger. The

red-turbaned, artistically draped figure, with the noble dusky head and

the fan-shaped raven beard, was striding in their wake with a serene

dignity that looked as if nothing could ever ruffle it. Had he been

ruffled? Had the glare existed merely in Aspasia's imagination? While

recognising a Pathan (whose contempt for the Hindoo probably exceeded

Baby's own), Bethune knew that it was quite possible the irritable pride

of the mountain man had taken fire at some real or fancied slight; but

the betrayal could have been no more than a flash.

The Major of Guides smiled to himself. He knew his native: the man who

will never give you more than an accidental peep of the bared blade in

the velvet sheath--no, not till he means to strike! About this fellow,

a splendid specimen of the noblest race, a creature cut out of steel and

bronze, there was, he thought, a more than usual sinister hint of the

wild nature under all the exquisite manner and the perfect

self-restraint; and he found himself regarding him with the complacent

eye of the connoisseur. The artistic lion-tamer likes his lions savage.

As he looked he wondered once and again how one so evidently a son of

the warlike Pathans could have sought the pacific calling of secretary.

Sir Arthur was taking his new toy down to Bombay with him, where there

were, he had been informed, certain documents which might be of value to

the "monumental work." And so it came to pass that Bethune and Muhammed

Saif-u-din, destined to share one of the subordinate vehicles, found

themselves presently standing side by side at the foot of the steps.

Whether because of the interest he must have seen he had inspired in the

officer, or whether he was simply drawn towards him by his racial

military instincts, Raymond could not determine, but, as they halted,

well-nigh shoulder to shoulder, the Pathan suddenly wheeled round,

looked him full in the face in his turn, then smiled. It was a frank

smile, showing a flash of splendid teeth; and it lit up the fierce,

proud features in a way that was at once bright and sad.

"It would be curious," reflected Bethune, "to know what sort of a soul

dwells in that envelope, which might become the greatest gentleman on

earth. I'll warrant the fellow has many a bloody page in his story that

a man might scarce look upon, and yet he has got a smile to stir you

like a woman's."

The first horses of the escort began to move with much crisp action, for

Sir Arthur was at last installed in his state chariot. Through the

great glass windows he might be seen and admired of all beholders,

feeling his wife's pulse with an air of profound concern; while she,

submissive, her patient smile upon her lips, was gazing up into his face

with gentle abstracted eyes.

"A model couple!" sneered Bethune to himself. And, turning impatiently

aside to devote his attention to the more pleasing subject of the

oriental, he found the latter just in the act of dropping his glance

from the same spectacle, and thought to notice a flicker as of kindred

scorn pass across the statuesque composure of the dark face.

"For ever will the East and the West be as poles apart," cogitated the

soldier, even as M. Châtelard had done; "upon no point do they in their

heart more despise us than in our subserviency to our women. I am not

sure," he pursued to himself, cynically, as the splendid presence of

Saif-u-din settled itself with dignity upon the seat beside him; "I am

not sure but that the orientals knew what they were about when they made

their laws concerning the false and mischievous sex."

Loud and deep rang the great guns of the salute: their Excellencies had

started. Rosamond Gerardine was bound for England. In a waggon, at the

tail of all the other equipages, sat Jani, withered and sad-faced, wrapt

in her thoughts as closely as in her dusky chuddah. She would not talk

with the bearers or even lament her coming exile. She held on tightly

with one thin brown hand to a much-battered military tin case, which she

herself had laid on the seat beside her. No one else would she permit to

touch it. The other servants mocked her about it, vowing it was full of

her hoardings and that they would rob her of it. At that she would

menace them fiercely with her monkey paw. Strange, sad, inscrutable

little Parca keeping guard on the fate of lives!

*CHAPTER X*

Bombay, a very dream-city, was fading--ever more dreamlike, enwrapped in

pale-tinted sunset mists--into the distance.

The salt breeze was in their faces; in their ears was the rushing of the

waters from the sides of the ship as she cut her way through. Already

the something of England that the sea must always bring her children,

the surroundings of an English ship especially, was about them! They

seemed to have come from the land of languor and secret doings into open

life, into simple action, into a busy, wholesome stir.

Beneath them pulsed the great heart of the ship, white foam pointing her

way as she forged ahead. Behind her stretched the furrow of her course,

two long lines, ever wider divergent till they lost themselves to the

eye. And now, by some fantastic mirage effect, the great oriental port,

with its glimmering minarets and cupolas, showed as if caught up into

the sky itself. Let but this iron heart labour on a little while

longer, let but this eager prow cut its way a little deeper towards the

sunset, and the East would have vanished altogether.... The travellers

would not even see the first glimmer of her evening lights hung a jewel

necklace on the horizon, so swiftly had the sea laid hold of them.

Homeward bound! The step from pier to steamer had already severed the

link of their strange affinity with the East. Its mystery had fallen

from them. Already this was England. Rosamond Gerardine and Aspasia,

side by side, watched the shores retreat, fade, sink, and vanish.

"Good-bye, India!" said Aspasia, her head sentimentally inclined,

dropping at last the little handkerchief with which she had been

frantically signalling long after there was any possibility of the

vessel being descried from the land otherwise than as a black spot;

"Good-bye, India, and hey for home!"

Lady Gerardine fixed the fading vision with wide, abstracted eyes.

"God grant," she said, under her breath, more to herself than to the

girl beside her, "that I may never see those shores again!"

"Amen!" said Aspasia, cheerfully.

Rosamond laid her hand upon Aspasia's wrist as they leaned against the

railings and pressed it with a grasp that almost hurt.

"An accursed land!" she went on, this time in a low, intense voice. It

was as if she flung anathema to the retreating shores. "Cruel, cruel,

treacherous! Oh, God, what has it not already cost us English! Is there

a home among us that has not paid its blood tribute to that relentless

monster? Listen, child. I was as young as you when I last beheld its

shores--thus--from the sea. It was in the dawn (it is fit it should now

be dusk), and we stood together as I stand beside you to-day. And I saw

it grow out of the sky, even with the dawn, a city of rose, of pearl,

beyond words beautiful--unimaginable, it seemed to me, in promise! He

said to me: 'Look, there is the first love of my life; is she not fair?

And I am bringing to her my other love ... and you two are all that I

will have of life.' And then he laughed and said: 'It would be strange

if I wanted more, with two such loves.' And, again: 'Not even for you

could I be false to her.'"

Aspasia, mystified, turned her bright gaze full upon her aunt's face.

In the pupils of Rosamond's eyes there was enkindled a sullen fire.

"He came back to her," she went on; "and she--that land--lay smiling in

the sunrise to receive him. Oh, how she can smile and look beautiful,

and smell fragrant, and caress, with the dagger hidden under the velvet,

the snake in the rose, and the sudden grave yawning! I've never been

home since," she said, with a sudden change of tone, bringing her glance

back from the misty horizon, to fix it upon Aspasia with so piteous and

haggard a look that the girl lost her composure. "And now I am coming

home alone, and he remains there." She made an outward sweep with her

left hand towards the north. "I am coming home alone. The other has

kept him. She has kept him. I am alone: he is left behind."

"Who?" cried the bewildered Baby, who had utterly failed to seize the

thread of her aunt's strange discourse. And, upon her usual

impulsiveness springing to a conclusion of mingled amazement and

derision: "Who--Runkle?" she exclaimed.

No sooner had the foolish cry escaped her lips than she could have

bitten out her tongue for vexation.

A change came over Lady Gerardine's face, colder and greyer than even

the rapid tropic evening that was closing upon the scene. The light

went out in her eyes, to be replaced by a distant contempt. The

features that had quivered with passion became set into their wonted

mask of repose; it was as if a veil had dropped between them, as if a

cold wind drove them apart.

"I was not speaking of your uncle," said Rosamond, at length, very

gently. Then she suggested that as it was growing late they should take

possession of their cabin.

And Aspasia, as she meekly acquiesced, trembled upon tears at the

thought of her blundering. For one moment this jealously centred heart

had been about to open itself to her; for one moment this distant

enfolded being had turned to her as woman to woman; impelled by God

knows what sudden necessity of complaint, of another's sympathy, of

another's understanding, the lonely soul had called upon hers. And she,

Aspasia--Baby, well did they name her so--had not been able to seize the

precious moment! The sound of her own foolish laugh still rang in her

ears, while the unconscious contempt in Rosamond's gaze scorched her

cheeks.

* * * * *

From the very first day, fate, in the shape of an imperiously intimate

Aspasia, drew Raymond Bethune, the saturnine lonely man, into the narrow

circle of Lady Gerardine's 'board-ship existence. In her double quality

of great lady and semi-invalid, the Lieutenant-Governor's wife was to be

withdrawn from the familiar intercourse which life on a liner imposes on

most travellers. It had been Sir Arthur's care to see that she was

provided with an almost royal accommodation, which, as everything in

this world is comparative, chiefly consisted in the possession of a

small sitting-room over and above the usual sleeping-cabin.

Into these sacred precincts Miss Cuningham hustled Bethune

unceremoniously, as the first dusk closed round their travelling home on

the waste of waters.

"Steward! ... Oh, isn't it too bad, Major Bethune! I've been ringing

like mad, and poor old Jani's bewildered out of her wits; and

Gibbons--that's our English fool of a maid--she's taken to groaning

already. There's not a creature to do anything for us, and that idiot

there says he's nothing to say to the cabins!"

Her arms full of flowers, she stood close to him; and the fragrance of

the roses and carnations came to him in little gushes with her panting

breath. Her rosy face, in the uncertain light, had taken to itself an

ethereal charm very different from its usual clear and positive outline.

Hardly had this realisation of her personality come to him than, under

the hands of the ship's servant she had so contemptuously indicated, the

flood of the electric light leaped upon them. And behold, she appeared

to him yet fairer--youth triumphant, defying even that cruel glare to

find a blemish in bloom or contour.

"What do you want?" he asked, with the softening of his hard face which

so few were ever privileged to see.

"A vase for our flowers--a big bowl. I hate messy little dabs; and I

don't want them to die an hour before they can help it. Oh, a really

big bowl, at once!"

Her residence in an Indian governor's palace had been short, but

sufficient to give Miss Aspasia the habit of command.

Raymond Bethune gave his dry chuckle as he set to work to fulfil her

behest.

"I've captured a salad bowl," cried he, almost jovially, when he

returned; "and the head steward is in despair!"

"Tell him to steal the cook's pudding-basins," said Aspasia, and swept

him back with her to the minute sitting-room.

Here sat Lady Gerardine, still wrapped in her cloak but bareheaded,

under the shaded light. Leaning back among her cushions, her feet

crossed on a footstool, she seemed to have taken full possession of her

quarters. The narrow commonplace surroundings had already received her

special personal imprint. The flowers, the cushions, a few books, a

great cut-glass scent bottle--the very disorder even of a litter of rich

trifles that had not yet found their place, removed the trivial

impression of steamer upholstery. She received him without surprise, if

without any mark of welcome; and Aspasia chattered, ordered, laughed,

kept him employed and amused. Now and again Lady Gerardine smiled

vaguely at her niece's outbursts. Bethune could not feel himself an

intruder. And certainly it was better than his fourth share of a

bachelor's cabin, better than the crowded saloon and smoking-rooms, with

their pervading glare and odour of high polish.

Through the open port-hole came the sound of the rushing, swirling

waters, punctuated by the slap of some sudden wave against the flank of

the ship. A wind had arisen, and now and again gusts, cold and briny,

rushed in upon the warm inner atmosphere of flowers.

Lady Gerardine held a large bouquet of Niphetos roses, and her pale long

fingers were busy unrolling the bonds that braced them in artificial

deportment. Their petals, thought the man, were no whiter than her

cheeks.

Presently Aspasia plunged her healthy pink hands down among the languid

blossoms and began pulling out the wires.

"I shouldn't, if I were you," said Rosamond; and then she held up a

spray. "See, the poor flower, all stained, all fallen apart, all

broken. Never draw away the secret supports, Baby. It is better to

hold one's head up, even with the iron in one's heart, and pretend it is

not there."

Bethune looked at her, a little startled. In some scarcely tangible way

the words seemed aimed at him; but he saw that for her, at that moment,

he did not exist.

For the first time a pang of real misgiving shot through him. He seemed

to behold her with new eyes. She struck him as very frail. Could it be

true, or did he but imagine it, that that lovely head, once so defiantly

uplifted against him, now drooped?

Feeling the fixity of his gaze upon her, she glanced up and then smiled.

Strange being! Was he, then, so easily forgiven? His heart gave a

sudden leap.

The memory of this first evening was one which haunted him all his life

with a curious intimate sweetness.

* * * * *

Time passed as time will pass on board ship; vague hours resembling each

other, dropping to dreamy length of days; days that yet lapse quickly

and moreover work a sure but subtle change. No traveller that lands

after a long sea journey is the same as he who started. Sometimes,

indeed, he will look back upon his former self as upon another, with

surprise.

So it was with Raymond Bethune; and if he came to view himself with

surprise, still more inexplicable to him was the new Lady Gerardine as

he learned to regard her. According to his presentiment, these two

women--she to whose puzzling personality he had vowed antipathy, and she

whose fresh young presence made dangerously strong demands upon his

sympathy--soon began to absorb all the energies of his thoughts. To a

man who had hitherto known no other emotion, outside a very ordinary

type of home affection, than friendship for another man; whose life,

with the exception of one brief period of glamorous hero-worship, had

been devoted to duty in its sternest, most virile form, this mental

pre-occupation over two women, both comparative strangers, was at first

a matter for self-mockery. It was afterwards one of self-conflict.

Whoso, however, has reached the point of actually combating an idea is

already and obviously its victim, and the final stage of abandonment to

the obsession cannot be very distant.

Looking back upon his memories, in later days, it was singular to him

how completely the girl and the woman divided his most vivid impressions

of that journey. If the vision of Aspasia, fresh as the spray, rosy as

the dawn, coming to meet him of a morning, brisk and free, across the

deck, her young figure outlined against sparkling sea and translucent

sky, was a memory all pleasant and all sweet, the picture of that other,

slow moving and pallid, so enwrapped in inexplicable mourning, so

immeasurably indifferent to himself, was bitten into the tablets of his

mind as with burning acid, fixed in lines of pain.

It is never flattering for a man to realise that he is of no consequence

to a woman with whom he is brought into daily intercourse. And to feel

that, though his acts have had a distinct influence upon her life, his

personality has failed to make the smallest impression, is a situation

certain to pique the most unassuming. In the end Bethune began to wish

that Lady Gerardine had retained even her original attitude of

resentment. Now and again, indeed, he would find her eye fixed upon

him, but at the same time would know unmistakably that her thought was

not with him. Sometimes her attitude of inexplicable sorrow seemed

harder to bear than her first evidences of heartlessness.

One day Aspasia had suddenly attacked her aunt upon the subject of her

black garb, crying, with her noted heedlessness:

"I declare, any one would think you were in mourning."

Lady Gerardine shifted her distant gaze from the far horizon to

Aspasia's countenance, and her lips moved but made no sound. In her

heart she was saying:

"How else should I clothe myself, when I am travelling with my dead?"

Almost as if he read her thought, Bethune sneered as he looked at her,

and with difficulty restrained the taunt that rose to his tongue. "Lady

Gerardine wears belated weeds!"

Her attitude of hopeless melancholy, her raiment of mourning, irritated

him bitterly. Yet, while he looked at her in harshness, he marked the

admirable white throat, rising like a flower stem from the dense black

of her dress, and found himself wondering whether any shimmer of colour

would have become her half so well.

Towards the end of their journey together he was once summoned to speak

with her alone. It was about the forthcoming book. Nothing could be

more brief, more businesslike than her words, more unemotional than her

manner. She asked for his instructions; she discussed, criticised,

concurred. It was obvious that, when she chose, her brain could act

with quite remarkable clearness. It was also obvious that she had

completely capitulated to his wishes; and yet never was victory more

savourless.

At the conclusion of this conversation she settled with him that, when

she had accomplished her part of the task, she would send for him. And

as he withdrew, he felt himself dismissed from her thoughts, except as a

mere instrument in what now seemed more her undertaking than his own.

At heart he found it increasingly difficult to accept the position with

good grace.

After this, during the few days of ship life together left to them, Lady

Gerardine seldom admitted him to her company; and thus Raymond was the

more thrown with Aspasia. The girl, unconventional by temperament and

somewhat set apart by her position of "Governor's niece," unhesitatingly

profited by a situation which afforded her unmixed amusement. She was

not in love as yet with the Major of Guides. Indeed, she had other and

higher ambitions. Aspasia's dream-pictures of herself were ever of a

wonderful artist of world-wide celebrity, surrounded by a sea of

clapping hands, graciously curtseying her thanks from the side of a

Steinway grand.... But Bethune interested her, and there was something

piquantly pleasant in being able to awaken that gleam in his cold, light

eye, in noticing that the lines of his impassive face relaxed into

softness for her alone.

One afternoon, as they sat on deck--the great ship cutting the blue

waters of the Adriatic, between the fading of a glorious red and orange

sunset and the rising of a thin sickle moon, Aspasia wrapped against the

chilly salt airs in some of her aunt's sables, out of which richness the

hardy, wild-flower prettiness of her face rose in emphatic contrast--she

told him the story of her short life.