Mr. Rayner had promised to return from Palaveram in time for dinner, but long, solitary hours till dusk still stretched before Hester on her return from morning service. She had not as yet yielded to the habit of taking a siesta, though she was assured that when the hot weather came she would find the need of it imperative. She sought instead companionship in her piano, rehearsing some of her old favourites, and then turned to a prettily bound volume of hymns set to music, which had been a wedding present from a Wesleyan friend. She tried over some of the airs, and coming on one which attracted her began to sing the words. Her sweet voice, which was so much missed in the ivy-mantled village church, vibrated melodiously through the verandah. So absorbed was she in her solace of song that she did not hear the arrival of a carriage on the gravel-sweep. Its occupant indeed stood at her elbow, silently looking down at her as her fingers strayed along the keys, before she was aware of his presence.

"Mark Cheveril!" she exclaimed at length, looking up with joy in her face. "This is a happy surprise!"

"It is so for me, anyhow. I wanted to have come earlier in the day to wish you a merry Christmas, but the Collector seemed dull, and I couldn't leave him. But better late than never. And to be greeted by the sound of your voice was good," he added, glancing at the slender, girlish figure on the music stool on which she had wheeled round to greet him in her surprise at his presence. "This will make a delightful paragraph in the letter to your mother I mean to date 'Christmas Day, Madras.' But I must really tell you before we pass on to other things a strange coincidence about this very hymn you were singing. You remember Mr. Morpeth whom we met at Mrs. Fellowes' that morning? I felt so drawn to him that I did what I don't think I ever confessed to you—I sought him out. When I stepped into his verandah I found him alone, and singing that very hymn." Mark hummed some of the lines—

"It has haunted me ever since. I must tell him of this coincidence. I have been corresponding with him, and mean to keep up the acquaintance. I heard from him that you had found your way to Vepery too, Hester, and are doing wonders there."

"Ah, that reminds me, Mark! A little bird told me only yesterday that you were the kind donor of our lovely piano for the girls' club. You can't think what a boon it is."

"I hope it's a decent one. I fear pianos are rather a lottery out here, and it would have lost a whole season to have ordered one from home."

"It has a beautiful tone, Mrs. Fellowes just loves it. It was a good thought of yours, Mark. How pleased mother will be when she hears you were the giver of the piano I told her about! I'm so glad Mrs. Fellowes wormed the secret out of Mr. Morpeth. Do you know I've never seen him since you left? He seems to elude me still—perhaps it's no wonder." Hester lowered her eyes, for she suddenly recalled her husband's reception of him, which she feared Mark must have overheard. "But notwithstanding," she said with a smile, "I don't think he does bear me a grudge, for Mrs. Fellowes told me he seemed pleased to hear I wished to go to see him with her. She says his house is full of interesting things."

"It is," returned Mark cordially. "But the man—his personality, his talk—is the most interesting of all. Truly fate has been very good to me since I came to the East. In my first week I met two of the best men I've ever known, David Morpeth and Felix Worsley. To be sure, they are very unlike—as far as the poles asunder in almost everything. The one seemed to me a wise, patient saint, while the Collector is the most impatient of men. I fear, too, he would say I was defaming the name if I was to dub him 'a saint,' yet there is about him the beauty of real dominant goodness. For instance, people say he is proud and all that—well, I find him full of the most winning humility."

"Why, I've always pictured Mr. Worsley as a most terrifying person from the stray remarks I've heard about him. Surely you idealise him, Mark, and see in him the reflection of your own good self. I think that's how Charlie would interpret your feelings."

"Ah, I see I shan't win you over to my hero till you see him."

"With your eyes?" said Hester, with an arch smile.

"No, with your own, if I mistake not! I only wish I could bring about a meeting. But I confess my hero is somewhat incorrigible. Nothing will induce him to face a fashionable dinner-party, and that reminds me, Hester, I must tell you how sorry I was not to be with you last night and not to bring the Collector—but he simply wouldn't hear of going to a dinner-party."

"Yes, Alfred was disappointed. He said he was once introduced to Mr. Worsley, and seemed to set his heart on having him as his guest," said Hester simply.

Mark felt a sharp twinge of self-reproach, for had not the truth been that the Collector had rejected the invitation stormily, saying he "declined to dine with Zynool's partner"? As Mark recalled it he feared that some of the borrowed stigma might also attach itself to this sweet friend in Mr. Worsley's mind—until they met, at least. When that hour struck, he felt confident that all would be well. As he glanced at Hester, he perceived that there was a subtle change in his old comrade. Her beauty had strengthened and deepened. There was a new air of tender grace in all her movements; but she was paler and thinner, the plump, girlish contour had vanished. The features, more delicately pencilled than heretofore, seemed written over with a bit of life-history not free from fret and jar, even blurred by patient tears. How could it be otherwise, he asked himself, with this high-souled girl exposed to the daily companionship of a nature so vain, so shallow, and he feared, so false, as he was reluctantly discovering Alfred Rayner to be? He recalled with fresh anxiety his shifty air when he had met him at Puranapore during his mysterious visit to the unprincipled Zynool. But happy chance had thrown Hester and him together on this Day of Glad Tidings. He must do all in his power to bring some pure, healthful pleasure into those few days on which he would be near her.

"By the way," he said, as he rose to take a cup of tea from Hester's hand, "I mustn't forget that one of the chief objects of my call to-day is to ask you to ride with me one morning. Some of the roads here are capital."

"Oh, that would be delightful—just like old times," said Hester brightening. "I haven't ridden since I came here. Alfred doesn't like riding, though he is so devoted to driving. Even when he was at the Rectory after our engagement, which you know was very short, he wouldn't go out with Charlie and me. Charlie thought he was really timid, and told me not to urge him. He won't mind my riding—at least I don't think so," she added, a shadow crossing her face not unnoticed by her visitor. "But he'll be here presently, and we'll ask him. You'll stay to dinner and see him, won't you?"

"With pleasure. I'm quite free this evening and we'll arrange this one ride anyhow. I've seen a perfect horse for you at Wallers'. I shall bring it round to-morrow morning. What do you say to going to St. Thomas's Mount? It's a place I've a fancy to explore. Have you been there?"

"No, I've really seen very few places round about—beyond the range of the wide compounds. I think your touring must be delightful. But you haven't told me anything of Puranapore yet except about the Collector, and I didn't get much from Alfred even after he had visited you."

Mark was silent. Rayner then had given his wife the impression that he had been at the English station while at Puranapore, and had, no doubt, concealed the fact that he was visiting Zynool. The discovery was disturbing, and he wondered if it would be wise to enlighten Hester there and then. He felt, however, that he could not bear to bring a deeper shadow to the sweet face, and proceeded instead to give some annals of the station-life.

"Well, to begin with the ladies. There's Mrs. Samptor, wife of the Superintendent of the District Jail, a big giant of a man, and a capital fellow. She is a little country-bred person who had never been to England and has a perfect horror of Eurasians."

Hester's eyes opened wider. She was about to exclaim: "Just like Alfred!" But that topic had cut too deep for her to touch it lightly.

"You wonder perhaps how she tolerates me," said Mark with a smile, as if divining her thoughts. "Well, as it happens, we are very good friends. Her mental process regarding the matter is peculiar, I allow, but it seems to her convincing, as she is a lady who prides herself on knowing everything about everybody. She volunteers to prove from my hands, my nails, and from my toes, I expect, if she were allowed to inspect them, from every feature of my face in fact, that I do not belong to the race she detests."

"And does the Collector like this little lady?"

"He does, I think. She amuses him. I sometimes accuse him of even encouraging her gossip. In that connection I once reminded him of the old proverb: 'One man may steal a horse, another may not look over the stable door,' as a case in point. The Collector's denunciations against gossip are most scathing, for instance, where Mrs. Goldring, the Judge's wife, is in question. She is a pompous, snobbish woman, and the Collector thinks that she sits on her little husband, the Judge, of whom he is very fond. Nor can he forgive her for her treatment of her weird-looking daughter Jane. The poor girl hates station life, and wants to go home and do governessing with some beloved aunts who keep a school. Then we have a Civil Surgeon and his wife, Dr. and Mrs. Campbell, delightful Scotch people."

"I wonder Alfred did not tell me about all these people. He must have met them when he was at Puranapore," said Hester, with a thoughtful air which Mark noticed, and he at once led the conversation into other channels.

Hester narrated to him the errand which had obliged her husband to go to Palaveram on this Christmas day, and they talked with sobered hearts of the sadness of it all; of the great entanglement in the meshes of which poor young Hyde had fallen a victim; and of the ever haunting mystery of life where evil triumphs in lives which seem inclined to good rather than to evil.

Shortly before the dinner-hour a telegram arrived from Palaveram to say that Mr. Rayner to his great regret would be unable to eat his Christmas dinner with his wife. But so congenially did the talk glide on between these two old friends, the young hostess decided, as she sat at dinner, that, after all, two might be an even more ideal number than eight for the complete enjoyment of the dinner-table.

When Mark rose to go, he was rejoiced to see Hester looking more like her old self than she had done since they had met in their new surroundings. She seemed to hold to her decision that there was no obstacle to the morning ride which he had suggested, saying as they parted:

"Alfred has so often reproached me for not going further afield in my drives, I'm sure he will be pleased to hear I've been adventurous enough to scale St. Thomas's Mount. You can't think what a joy an hour on horseback will be to me! It's a delightful suggestion, Mark, and I thank you for it," she said, with happy, grateful eyes, as she bade him good-night.