Embira was like most second and third rate Indian stations, neither better or worse. There were a dirty native city, where plague and famine alternated; a river that was either a rushing torrent or as dry as a bone; and cantonments which had seen little change since the Mutiny. A battalion of Pelham and Darrell’s regiment was stationed there, with large detachments of artillery and cavalry.

The only remarkable thing about the station was that, although it was very far from being garrisoned by any part of a crack regiment, the social status of the officers and their wives appeared to be almost on a level with that of the household troops. The wife of the Colonel commanding was the niece of an Earl besides being the commanding officer of the C. O. There were a couple of titled women among the officers’ wives, and no less than two subalterns would inherit baronetcies. Neither Pelham nor Darrell stood any chance of inheriting his grandfather’s title, nor did there seem much more possibility of Darrell’s inheriting the problematical fortune which was the staple joke between Pelham and himself.

Darrell, who would have been classed as a detrimental in London, was of the sort to be adored by the young ladies of the post; and his appearance with a bride, and that with scarcely a day’s warning, was both a slight and a grievance to the ladies of Embira. And an American wife, too! It was the aim and object of the ladies to maintain the social tone of the regiment, of which they were enormously proud, and here was Darrell, the grandson of a peer, introducing a person among them whom it was taken for granted he had met in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains near Philadelphia, or who was perhaps a miner’s daughter in the vicinity of Boston.

It was in this critical and even hostile circle that Elizabeth made her first appearance, three days after her arrival at Embira. It was on the occasion of the regimental sports, which were rendered brilliant by the presence of a large party of visitors from England, including the noble Earl who was uncle to the C. O.’s wife, a commissioner who had brought his own new wife on purpose to eclipse the pretty wife of the deputy-commissioner, and a vice-regal aide-de-camp,—all together a brilliant party for a remote Indian station.

The afternoon was hot and bright, but the gardens which were reserved for tea and flirtations were still unparched and the white polo grounds adjoining were not as yet dust blinded. When Elizabeth, at five o’clock in the afternoon, appeared dressed for the occasion, on the veranda of their quarters, Darrell surveyed her with pride and pleasure, not unmixed with apprehension. She looked, it is true, exquisitely charming in her pale green muslin, her rose-crowned hat, her white parasol, and with her little, black, silver-buckled shoes, a model of daintiness to the eyes of the Englishmen. But Darrell also felt some anxiety; he suspected that she would be coldly received by the unkind women and patronized by the kind ones, and he feared that Elizabeth might be as crushed by both as an English girl might have been. Pelham, on the contrary, who understood Elizabeth far better than her husband did and felt even a deeper pride in her as his silent adoration for her had grown deep and strong, felt not the slightest fear. Elizabeth was in manner and bearing, as well as in beauty, far above the most patrician woman at the station. Every other woman except herself realized and recognized that there was some one above her in station, she was of necessity the social inferior of somebody. Not so with Elizabeth. As an American woman of good birth, she had never seen or heard of any one who was above her, and would have been perfectly at her ease with royalty itself. The admiring glances and compliments of Pelham and Darrell flattered Elizabeth and brought the wild-rose color to her creamy cheeks; and with the consciousness of looking her best, she entered the gardens with her husband walking on one side of her and Pelham on the other, and was duly presented to the Colonel’s lady.

There is perhaps nowhere in the world that the inability of Englishwomen to dress well and their total subjection to their dressmakers are so obvious as in India. There the woollen gowns which look well on an autumn day among the Scotch hills, and the tailor-made dresses which are suited for Regent Street on a dull morning, the elaborate silks and laces which are fit for London drawing-rooms and theatres, are worn with a serene unconsciousness of unfitness. On this hot afternoon the ladies of Embira had put on their best,—that is to say, their worst clothes as far as unsuitability went. Hats bristling with feathers, large white boas, rustling silks, and gorgeous parasols made the gardens bright, but made the wearers look half-baked. Among these came Elizabeth’s delicate green muslin and airy lightness of attire. The men, on looking at her, felt as if they had just had an iced drink. The ladies saw that she had accomplished something quite beyond them in the way of dress, which, as Darrell half feared, made the unkind determine to be more icy to her and the kind even more patronizing.

The Colonel’s lady, a vast person in purple silk and a collection of diamond ornaments which made her appear as if covered with a breastplate of jewels, was one of the latter kind. She greeted Elizabeth as if she were a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl who must needs be awed by all she saw around her. Elizabeth, who knew well the cosmopolitan society of Washington and was accustomed to see power and importance classed together, was in no way terrified; nor was she even astonished when the Earl, a shabby person who had a turbulent wife whom he was very glad to leave at home, asked to be introduced to Mrs. Darrell.

The Colonel’s wife, who had spent the whole time of her uncle’s visit trying to induce him to be introduced to people against his will, was staggered, but promptly agreed to his proposition. She whispered his name and rank in Elizabeth’s ear and advanced a step or two towards the Earl, but Elizabeth quite unconsciously stood perfectly still and had the Earl brought to her to be introduced, receiving him exactly as she would have done some of the numerous pleasant elderly gentlemen whom she had met in Washington. The Earl, who was not without humor, saw the look of amazement on the face of the Colonel’s lady at Elizabeth’s calm attitude and secretly enjoyed the situation. He was an easy-going person who had but one requirement on the face of the earth, and that was to be perpetually amused and entertained. And this one requirement of his soul was amply satisfied by the charming young American girl. She was not in the least like most of the American girls he had known and met in England, who were usually the daughters of retired tradesmen and rather poor imitations of Lady Clara Vere de Vere. The Earl, however, much to his chagrin was not allowed to have Elizabeth all to himself and was compelled to share her society with a couple of impudent subalterns, who in the pursuit of a pretty face and a dainty foot feared neither man nor devil.

This was only the beginning of an afternoon of triumph for Elizabeth, a triumph which she enjoyed without appreciating its true significance. She had the enormous advantage of being distinctly different from the women around her, and of having the perfect ease which comes from the feeling of perfect equality. She was perhaps the best-born woman of all those present, reckoning good birth to mean many generations of people at the top of the ladder. Ever since the first Brandon, a decayed gentleman, had set foot on American soil in the days of Charles I., the Brandons had been in the front rank, with none better than themselves. The Earl himself had a great-grandmother who began life as a milliner’s apprentice and thence progressed to the London stage. But Elizabeth’s great-grandmothers were all of the Brahmin caste in her own country. The ancestry of the titles in the regiment went back only as far as the early part of the eighteenth century, while Elizabeth’s ancestors had behind them already some hundreds of years as gentle people, before their advent into the new country. It was that perhaps which gave Elizabeth the patrician nose and her delicate hands and feet, and it certainly gave her that perfect composure of manner which, unlike Lady Clara Vere de Vere’s icy stateliness, could not be successfully imitated by any parvenu who ever walked the earth.

Darrell was secretly delighted at the admiration which Elizabeth excited. He had not felt so great a sensation of triumph since he had introduced into the regimental mess a certain Irish setter with a pedigree which could be proved back to the time of Queen Elizabeth. Pelham, who would have been a favorite among the ladies had he allowed it, saw everything out of the tail of his eye and was rather sorry when he saw the drift of men towards Elizabeth. When the trio returned to Darrell’s quarters through the soft Indian twilight, Darrell was openly elated and Elizabeth secretly so, but Pelham felt that Elizabeth’s course lay in dangerous waters.

And Pelham was right. Englishwomen have their charms and their virtues, both of which are great and admirable, but they have no sense of comradeship. Elizabeth was to them an alien, but instead of appealing to their sympathies, they saw her without effort easily become the acknowledged belle of the regiment. There was little in common beyond the mere formal exchange of courtesies between herself and even those women and girls at the station who wished to be kind to her. She had no accomplishments in the usual sense. She neither played, nor sang, nor drew, nor painted, either on china, fans, screens, or picture frames, nor could she do anything in water colors. She had no taste for games, and would not take the trouble even to play tennis. She disliked cards and would not play bridge, nor was she in any sense the athletic woman and had no tales of prowess to tell of tremendous mountain walks or long excursions on horseback. She rode well in a graceful, untaught manner which improved distinctly under Darrell’s masterly coaching, but she did not give up her days to it as did some of the girls with statuesque figures who looked their best on horseback.

The ladies wondered how Mrs. Darrell disposed of her time. If they could have taken a look into Elizabeth’s own sitting room, they would have seen a big sewing-table; and the beautiful and dainty gowns which from time to time Mrs. Darrell appeared in, and the immense variety of hats which caused the other women to think that she was squandering her husband’s substance, came forth from that sewing room. Instead of drawing trashy pictures and embroidering mats and picture frames, Elizabeth with an artist’s eye designed and made beautiful little costumes which looked as if they came from Regent Street or the Rue de la Paix. Her housekeeping, too, was well attended to, and the little dinners which she occasionally gave were remarkably good. Her mind had not been much cultivated, but under Pelham’s direction she learned with avidity—much to the amusement of Darrell, who protested against a learned wife and predicted that Elizabeth would soon be writing a novel or doing some other unholy thing likely to result from women who meddled with books.

Meanwhile Elizabeth’s belle-ship in the regiment became firmly established. Her charming appearance and her graceful and affable manners with men, the subtle way she had of making every man believe that he was her favorite, went farther with the officers of the 178th Foot than the sketching, painting, playing, and singing of the other women. Her manners had that fascinating combination known only to American women, and possibly the secret of their ascendency over men, of something between an appeal and a command; it was like the rule of a favorite and delightful child in a household. It may be imagined that this did not enhance Elizabeth’s popularity with her own sex.

Elizabeth wondered and was piqued at the coldness of the women towards her. She made faint, ineffectual attempts at intimacy with the Colonel’s daughters and the wives of various subalterns, but it was of no avail. She was the daughter of the regiment as far as the officers were concerned, but by no means a sister of the regiment to the ladies. Pelham was surprised that the tongue of scandal passed her by, but with innocence on Elizabeth’s part, and a couple of able-bodied men like Pelham and Darrell to stand by her, the gossips found it safe to let Mrs. Darrell alone.

Elizabeth was for a time quite happy in her new life, her only sorrow being the separation from her father. She wrote him passionate letters imploring him to come to see her; but it costs money to get from Washington to Embira in the Punjaub, and General Brandon was chronically hard up. And so her life moved on, almost as closely linked with Pelham’s as with Darrell’s, for two years. It was, however, moving in a direction which Elizabeth only dimly foresaw and understood. By Pelham’s tact and judgment rather than her own there never was a breath of scandal concerning their deep and obvious intimacy. Pelham was a man to be feared as well as respected, and such people are tolerably safe from criticism.

Every day of these two years found Pelham more and more deeply and hopelessly in love with Elizabeth, with the knightly love which would guard her not only against the whole world but against himself and herself; for in those two years Elizabeth’s mind, ripening and developing, perceived that she had married a man with every grace and virtue joined to a tiresome and amiable commonplaceness. It frightened her sometimes when she discovered how bored she grew by her husband’s conversation, and she was still more frightened at the prospect which sometimes occurred to her of being separated from Pelham, on whom she had learned to depend as other women depend upon a brother or a father or even a husband. But she was not unhappy, although she gradually found her way out of the lover’s paradise into which she had embarked with Darrell.

For Darrell himself she never lost the slightest respect. He was as truthful and honorable and truly unselfish as Pelham himself was. Nevertheless, at the end of two years came the beginning of a crisis. A beautiful boy was born to Elizabeth, a child of fairness and of delightful temper. “The jolliest little chap I ever saw,” swore Darrell at the club, when the baby was less than a week old.

Elizabeth was a devoted mother, but Darrell was the most passionately fond father imaginable. The child merely as a pet was worth to him more than all the dogs and horses in existence, including the Irish setter. In him there was a deep well-spring of fatherhood. He had thought himself perfectly happy before the boy was born, but afterwards he felt he had never known what true happiness was until then; and when the child was a year old Darrell, proudly calling him “my soldier,” used to put his own cap on the baby’s pretty head and his sword in its little hand, and throw his military cloak around it and sit and gaze in rapture at the child as it laughed and crowed, delighted with its trappings.

At the end of a year, like a judgment from heaven, the child died, after a day’s illness. In general it is the father who consoles the heart-broken mother, but in this case it was Elizabeth who kept Darrell sane in the midst of his terrible grief, who sat by him day and night, who checked by her own tears his strange cries of grief, and who upheld him when he passed through the deep waters. She herself was stricken in heart as only mothers can be, and she had a presentiment that she would never again have a child.

Pelham, who would cheerfully have borne all of Elizabeth’s sorrow at the boy’s death, was amazed and even indignant that Darrell should not have sustained her in this dreadful hour. Silently and with a sleepless vigilance and constancy Pelham supported and comforted Elizabeth.