Chapter II: Part 2

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.