Mrs. Boynton was physically incapable of being constant to anything disagreeable, even to her own thoughts. The love of ease which came uppermost in her made it impossible; so, as she sat waiting for George Keene on the following evening, she had forgotten the vague remorses and regrets which had assailed her the night before. All she chose to remember was the fact that both George and Dan would be away from Hodinuggur if anything happened. What more could any one ask from one in her position? She made a pretty picture in the pretty room. A wood fire blazed on the hearth, a scent of English flowers filled the air. Everything, from the books on the table to the graceful figure in white satin and pearls on the wicker chair, told a tale of delicacy and refinement, of what it is the fashion nowadays to call culture. On the mantelpiece, among a Noah's Ark of china beasts, and supported by a placid brass Buddha, George Keene's sketch of the dust-storm, the kikar-tree, and the rat-hole, struck a dissonant note in the general harmony; but Gwen's ears were too much attuned to content for her to notice it. Briefly, she was full of solid relief; not only because escape from a tight corner seemed assured, but that such relief had come in the nick of time. For Lewis Gordon had been over to tea, saying things which made it imperative that something definite should be settled about Dan's promotion and prospects. Saying, for instance, that he was growing sick of doing orderly duty at the Tweedies, house, and wanted one of his own. That she needed a firm hand to prevent her wasting her pension on pari mutuels, and beneath these jesting complaints she had seen real discontent and a determination for change in the future. And was he not right? Her whole mind gave its assent to his wisdom. What an unspeakable relief it would be to find herself back in a straight path; not only for her own sake, but for the sake of others--of those two especially whom she had implicated all unwittingly. But for them she would have defied the plotters; but for them she would never have stooped to flatter Dalel Beg, and take shawls and ornaments at nominal prices from Manohar LÂl; to do any of those things, in short, with which their covert hints had forced her to rivet the chain which bound her to deceit. At least so she told herself, but then she was a proficient in the art of playing the thimble trick on her own mind, and, as often as not, was really incapable of saying where the motive power of her own actions lay. So, as she sat in the wicker chair waiting for George Keene, she felt quite virtuous over the sacrifice of her own honourable instincts on the shrine of friendship. Even if anything did happen, all real blame would lie with Colonel Tweedie for allowing both George and Dan to be absent; but what was blame to the head of a Department? It slipped from him like water from a duck's back. And then, in regard to the water itself? Even Lewis allowed that the poor people might just as well have it as not----'

'Keene sahib salaam deta,' said the servant, interrupting her soliloquy of smooth things. She rose with outstretched hand and kindly smile.

'Punctual as ever. We shall be in time for number two----' then she paused abruptly in careless surprise. George, who had been told off as escort during the three-mile dandy ride to the Town Hall, was still in his light morning suit. Smart enough in his new shirts and ties, and with a carnation in his buttonhole, but still scarcely in the costume for a bachelors' ball. 'What is the matter? Aren't you coming?' she asked quickly as he stood silent yet disturbed, for the sight of her always had the nature of an electric shock upon him.

'To see you so far, of course. To the ball? I'm afraid not. You see I have to start to-night.'

'Start? Where?

'For Hodinuggur; where else?' He spoke lightly, but his face contradicted his tone. When is it a light matter to leave Paradise?

'Nonsense!' broke in Gwen sharply, startled out of all save negation. 'You must not go.'

'Must, I'm afraid,' he echoed, and his voice was a trifle unsteady. 'You see,' he went on more confidently, 'I ought never to have taken that offer of extra leave. I knew it at the time, but I thought Dan would stop, and the temptation---- However, I'm off now.'

'Now?' she echoed in her turn, still lost in her surprise.

'To-night I mean. Of course I have no chance of a tonga, so I must go by dhooli. It is a bore, but it can't be helped.'

The phrase seemed to bolster up his manliness, and he smiled at her. Such a pleasant-faced boy! so clean, so wholesome, so full of promise for the future. A pang shot through Gwen's heart at the sight of him and roused quick opposition to unlucky chance.

'But why? It isn't as if you were keeping him--I mean Mr. Fitzgerald. We settled all that; he goes back to Rajpore all the same.'

'So Gordon told me this afternoon. That is why I must return--the place can't be left alone, of course.' As he stood leaning against the mantelpiece his eye caught his own sketch, and he took it up half mechanically. 'To think I shall be back in that hole the day after to-morrow,' he said with a short laugh. He felt very sore, yet determined to face his pain in dignified fashion. 'Meanwhile,' he added, 'you must not be late. Is that your cloak?'

The futility of being tactful, even for your most familiar friends, was being borne in upon Gwen Boynton with the remembrance of her own certainty that Dan Fitzgerald's return to Rajpore must be necessary to the lad's acceptance of the leave. And here he was declaring it to be the stumbling-block! The thought sapped the very foundation of her general security, and made the results which this change in his plans might produce in hers strike her confusedly. She set aside the wrap he held out, with quite a tremulous hand.

'You are very foolish. Nobody wants you to go. Even Dan----'

'Perhaps,' he interrupted, feeling set up, as it were, by her evident regret. 'But, if anything were to go wrong, you know, I should never forgive myself.'

The words were to a certain extent quite meaningless to him; he did not even seriously contemplate the possibility they suggested and yet they roused her fears, her regrets.

'But if anything were to go wrong,' she answered, forgetting caution in her eagerness, 'it would be better you should be away. Surely you must see that it would be better for you both to be away--if--if anything should happen.'

He smiled indulgently. 'But nothing can happen if I am there. And it means such a lot to Dan. I think I told you that he is engaged to a girl----'

'Yes! yes! I know; I know. But, as I said, if I were the girl----' She broke off hurriedly, then began again. 'George, what has that to do with the question? Nothing will happen, of course, and then you will have lost your pleasure for nothing. Don't go! It is foolish. It is unkind--when we all want you to stay--when I want you--I do indeed--you will stay, won't you, George?--just to please me.'

To do her justice, she seldom stooped to use her own personal charm as she did then, wilfully; but the case was urgent--the boy must not go. George stared at her incredulously for a moment. 'Don't,' he said in a low voice; 'please don't.'

'But it is true, George,' she went on, laying her hand on his arm. 'I do want you to stay; I do indeed.'

His hand met hers suddenly, almost unconsciously, to fall away from it again in a gesture of quick renunciation.

'No! no!' he began in the same low tones, 'it isn't true--how can it be true?' Then his whole nature seemed to cast reserve aside, and his voice rose passionately. 'Why should you care? I have never thought you could--never--I swear to you never! How could I? Do you not see it is only what you are to me, not what I am to you? What does that matter? But for the other--for what you have been, and are, and will be all my life?--Ah! that is different--Yet you know that! well enough--you must know--for I can't tell it--not even to you.'

And there, English boy as he was, she saw him on his knee stooping to kiss the hem of her garment. It was cut in the latest fashion, full round the edge, and bordered by pearls of great size. They might have been of great price also--the Hodinuggur pearls, for instance--and George been none the wiser. He saw nothing but a blaze of light through the open gates of heaven showing him a woman, transfigured, glorified? And she? There was nothing before her eyes save a boy at her feet--a very ordinary boy, whose every-day admiration she had accepted carelessly; yet it was she who, covering her face with her hands, shrank back as if blinded.

'Don t,' she cried in sharp accents of pain. 'You don't know--I--I don't like it.'

He was on his feet again in an instant, blushing, confused. 'I--I beg your pardon,' he stammered. 'I don't know what induced me to--to behave like--like a fool.'

In sober truth he did not, being all unused to self-analysis, and far too young to understand his own instinctive recoil from the cheap cajolery which had caused his outburst. But she was older; she understood. He would not let her stoop, and yet--ah, God! how low she had stooped already! So the emotion she had wantonly provoked in him caught her and swept her from her feet.

'Oh, George!' she cried, coming a step nearer and thrusting her hands into his as if to hold him fast and make him listen. 'It was a mistake! I meant no harm--no harm to any one--least of all to you.'

'No harm!' he echoed blankly. 'What harm have you done?'

She looked at him, realising her own imprudence, yet for all that not sufficiently mistress of herself for caution. A worse woman than she might have kept silence; but she could not. The shame, the dread of betraying the lad who trusted her so utterly forced her on.

'Don't ask, George!' she pleaded. 'I can't tell you--indeed there is nothing to tell. Only you must not go down to Hodinuggur now. Believe me, it is better you should not. I can give you no reason, but it is so. Don't go, George, for my sake.

'For your sake,' he echoed, still more blankly. 'Why? I don't understand--Mrs. Boynton, I----' He paused; his hand went up in a fierce gesture, and came down in still fiercer clasp on the mantelpiece. His eyes left her face, shifting their startled, incredulous gaze to his own grim jest leaning against the brass Buddha. 'Unless--unless----'

There was a dead silence.

'If there is anything to tell,' he said at last, 'tell it me for God's sake; it would be better--than this. Why am I to stay?--for your sake.'

Tell! How could she tell the horrible truth; and yet if he knew all he might be able to help. Then the need of support, the craving for sympathy, which at all times make it hard for a woman in trouble to keep her own counsel, fought against the evasion suggested by caution.

'Oh, George! I meant no harm--I did not, indeed.' The weak appeal for mercy, which presages so many a miserable confession, struck cold to the lad's heart. He walked over to the table and flung himself into a chair, hiding his face in his clasped hands.

'You had better tell me everything,' he said in a muffled voice. 'Then I shall know what to do--don't be afraid--it--it won't make any difference.'

Once more his words roused her self-scorn and made her forget herself for a time. 'But it must make a difference, I want it to make a difference,' she cried hotly, crossing to the table in her turn, and seating herself opposite him. 'Yes! I will tell you. It is the only thing to be done now.'

She was never a woman given to sobs and tears, and even through the shame of it all, there was a relief in telling the tale.

'Yes! yes!' he said once, interrupting that ever recurring plea of her own innocence of evil intent, 'of course you meant no harm. So you took the jewels and sold them to Manohar LÂl for six thousand rupees.'

The fact, recounted in his hard, hurt voice, seemed to strike her in its true light for the first time, and she looked up wildly from the resting-place her head had found upon her bare crossed arms.

'Did 11, she asked, pushing the curls from her forehead. 'Yes, I suppose I did. It seems incredible now. Oh, George, what shall I do? what shall I do?'

It did seem incredible, and yet his fears as to what she might yet have to tell him, proved his credence of what he had already heard.

'You had better go on,' he answered dully. 'I can't say what is to be done till I have heard all.'

The sound of his own voice shocked him. Was it possible that he was sitting calmly listening to such a story from her lips and asking her to go on? The curse of the commonplace seemed to settle upon him, depriving him even of his right to passionate emotion.

'Is that all?' he asked wearily, when she had told him of everything save the empty dandy waiting outside the dressmaker's shop. His question came more from the desire to help her along should there be more to tell than from curiosity or fear. Since, from the very beginning, he had been vexedly conscious of his own relief in remembering that she had returned his watch and chain before she had even reached home.

The query, however, roused in her a sudden fierce resentment against her own humiliation. Every syllable of that story, now that it was told, seemed an outrage on that love of smooth things which was her chief characteristic, and a sort of vague wonder at her own confidence made her answer swiftly.

'That is all I know. Is it not enough?' After all, it was true; what more was there to tell save the barest possibilities?

Her reply left George face to face with action, yet he sat on silent, unable even to speak. At last he rose, and crossing to where she leant face downwards over the table, stood beside her with quivering lips. 'I am sorry,' he began, then stopped before the fatuity of his own words.

'Do you think I am not sorry too?' she broke in recklessly, raising herself to look him full in the eyes. 'I wish I were dead--if that would help; but it won't. Something must be done; and done at once. George! Why should you go down? To stay is so simple, and it will hurt no one--believe me, it is best--best for us all.'

She was back to the position she had taken up before her appeal to his passion had recoiled upon herself, but he could not follow her so far, and he gave a bitter laugh.

'For you and for me, no doubt. But for Dan? Remember what the possible loss of promotion means to him. Besides, I have promised. No! I must go down, that much is certain.'

'And after?'

For the life of him he could not tell. He seemed unable to think of any course of action save the palpably proper one of going straight to the Chief and telling him of the plot laid against the sluice-gate. His instinct for this remaining clear and well defined amid all the confusion. As he stood silent, almost sullen, she laid her hand quickly on his arm. 'You will not be rash, George--for my sake you will not----'

'Whatever I do will be for your sake,' he said unsteadily.

'And you must not be angry with me. Indeed and indeed, I meant no harm at first, and afterwards I was so frightened; so afraid for you all. Oh, don't be angry with me, George.'

He set her hand aside with a hopeless gesture, and turned away to hide the tears in his eyes. She did not understand, and a great dumbness was upon him. He could say nothing. After all, what was there to say? She had done this thing, meaning no harm, and he must save her, and himself, and Dan from the consequences, somehow. He took out his watch mechanically and looked at the time. Barely ten o'clock! So it was possible to destroy heaven and earth in half an hour!

'It is time you were going,' he said, in quite a commonplace tone. 'I can see you so far. You had better go. Gordon--and the others--might wonder.'

It was the first time he had ever hinted at the supposition that some definite tie existed between her and her cousin; this, and his cynical acceptance of the fact that in the tragedy of life action must be swayed by the desire of the spectators as much as by the emotions of the actors themselves, brought home to Gwen her crime against the boy's youth, and for the first time she broke into a sob.

'Oh, George! why did I do it? why did I do it?'

Why, indeed? A pitiable thing, surely, to stand silent without an answer. Pitiable also for the woman, forced by considerations into self-control. Into bathing her face, possibly powdering it, certainly re-arranging the pretty artful curls, and so setting off through the dark night to the Town Hall, as if nothing had happened. For what loss of liberty is comparable to that entailed on the possessor of a fringe which will come out of curl, even with the damp of tears?

The first clouds of the coming monsoon were drawn over the heads of the hills like an executioner's cap, and George, riding the hired pony behind the dandy, felt as if he were following the funeral of a faith condemned to death. A dreary little procession this, despite its goal, as it wound its way between the dark chasm of the valleys on the one side and the dark shadow of the hills on the other. And then, like some enchanted palace set between earth and sky, that pile upon the ridge sending long beams of light and fitful snatches of dance-music across the ravines came into view; so familiar, yet so strange. So were the twinkling lamps, the crowd of rickshaws and dandies blocking up the angles and arches, the red carpet in the porch, the red streak of baize climbing up the white stairs.

He kept that pearl-edged hem of her garment from the dust till she reached them.

'Have you settled what you are going to do?' she asked in a low voice, as he held out his hand to say good-bye. He shook his head.

'I'll settle it somehow, you needn't be afraid.'

'I am not afraid. But, if the worst comes to the worst, I will not let others suffer for my fault. So be careful--for my sake.'

'Whatever I do will be for your sake--you know that.'

He stood watching her go up the stairs; up and up, until the last trail of that hem disappeared amid the coloured lamps and flowers. That was the end of it all!--of all save Hodinuggur and the desire to kill somebody. First of all, however, there must be safety for her; and that might be secured by money. During that three miles' ride his thoughts had been busy over possibilities, and one of them made him turn the hired pony's nose towards Manohar LÂl's shop instead of homewards. There was no power in India like the power of rupees, he thought; and they--with the Club still open and half a dozen young fellows as reckless as oneself ready to back the chance of one living to pay just debts--were not difficult to borrow for a month or two. Especially when there was something--not much--but still a few hundred pounds or so to come when the dear old governor---- George choked down a sob in a curse at the hired pony for stumbling over the ill-paved alley.

The dawn had broken when the patient beast pulled up for the last time by the verandah of Colonel Tweedie's house. A drowsy servant dozed against the long coffin-like dhooli, the bearers crouched outside, nodding in a circle round a solitary hookah.

'The Huzoor having lost chance of the mail, may perhaps delay till eve,' suggested the half-roused torch-bearer, mechanically corking up his useless bottle of oil at the sight of the growing glow in the east.

George, his face flushed yet haggard, stood for an instant looking over the pine woods to where, had the light been stronger, he might have seen the angle of a little house among the trees. After all, why should he not stop now, if only to see her gratitude? Twelve hours, delay was not much, especially when she was safe. Why need that be his last sight of her going up the stairs with the pearls----pearls!--

An hour afterwards, when the sun tipped over the lower hills to make the morning glories, festooned from rock to rock, open their eyes, they opened them upon the coffin-like dhooli going rapidly down hill to the accompaniment of shuffles and grunts, and recurring protestations that the sahib was 'do mun puccka.'^[4] If the heaviness of heart could have been measured, George might have weighed a ton.

Even at the best of times the descent from the cool hills to the hot plains is never easy, and in this case paradise lay behind, purgatory in front.

'I am so sorry Mr. Keene has gone,' said Rose Tweedie at breakfast. 'I shall miss him dreadfully.' Lewis Gordon's eyebrows went up superciliously.

'No doubt; but he was right to go, in more ways than one.'

Colonel Tweedie, busy over a virtuous plate of porridge and milk which in some mysterious way he regarded as a sign of youth, gave his preliminary cough.

'I scarcely agree with you, Gordon. In my opinion there is--er--a savour--of--of insubordination; or, not to speak so strongly--a--a want of respect, in this sudden departure. Of course, the zeal and the--the desire to do his duty--are pleasing, very pleasing in so young a man. At the same time, a little more confidence in--er--the judgment of----'

'Mr. Gordon wasn't thinking of that, father,' interrupted the girl, with her grey eyes showing some scorn for both her companions; 'he meant to imply that George--Mr. Keene--was better away from Simla.'

'Your perspicacity does you credit, Miss Tweedie; I did mean it. He has been going rather fast, and will be none the worse of saving up some more rupees at Hodinuggur.'

'If he had the money to spend, I don't see why he shouldn't spend it in having a good time,' she retorted quickly. 'He won't ask you to pay the bills, will he?'

'Hope not, I'm sure; but the bearer brought quite a little pile of them to me this morning by mistake.'

Rose bit her lip. 'Perhaps you will be kind enough to tell your man to put them back into Mr. Keene's room. I'll forward them when I write. Are you coming with me to the Grahams, this afternoon, father?'

But Colonel Tweedie was not to be diverted from the Head-of-the-Department frown he had been preparing.

'I am sorry to hear it. To say the least, it is bad taste to--to----'

'Leave I.O.U's instead of P.P.C.'s,' remarked Lewis flippantly. 'But really, sir, I don't see how he could help it, after all. He had to go in such a hurry.'

'I deny the necessity,' continued the Colonel pompously. 'I fail to see any just cause for setting his opinion against that of--of his elders and superiors.'

'Unless he had private reasons of his own,' suggested his daughter.

'My dear Rose, a public servant can have no private reasons.'

There was an epigrammatic flavour about the remark which, to the Colonel's ears, completely covered its absolute want of sense. He felt vaguely that he had said something clever, and that it might be as well to let it close the subject, which he did by answering the previous question as to whether he would go to the Grahams'. Certainly, if it did not rain; but the barometer was falling fast, and a telegram had come to the office that morning to say the monsoon had broken with unusual violence at Abu. It might be expected north at any moment. On which the two men fell to talking about dams and escapes, inundations, cuts, and such like things, while Rose sat silent, indignant with Lewis, yet disturbed at the confirmation his hints gave of her own fears. George had been reckless, there could be no doubt of that. Had not one of her partners last night told her that he had left George playing poker at the Club but half an hour before? George who had declared he had not time to put in an appearance at the ball!

When breakfast was over she went into the lad's empty room for the bills, and took the opportunity of giving a housewifely glance round to see if nothing had been left behind or taken away in the hurry. The former, certainly, for there was the bottom drawer quite full;--old shirts and ties, a rather battered pot-hat, and beneath the whole a picture.

She stood looking at it blankly. What a very odd coincidence! The girl of her dream! The girl with the quaint dress and the AyÔdhya pot clasped to her breast. Why had George brought it up to Simla and never showed it to any one? Why, when the pot was stolen, had he said nothing about the girl? though, on the other hand, she herself had kept silence about her dream. She puzzled over it for some time; at last, finding certainty on but one point--namely, that for some reason or another George had wished to keep the picture secret--she took it away to her own room. For she was of those who regard unspoken wishes on the part of a friend to be quite as binding as any they may express.

Just about the same time Gwen Boynton, still in her bed, was looking at something else George had left behind him, but this had only been an envelope carefully addressed to her. It contained two pieces of paper signed by Manohar LÂl. One was a receipt for a diamond necklace, on which Rs. 6000 had been lent. The other, of later date, giving a quittance in full for the same sum plus interest.

How simple! Why had she never thought of such a plan before? But where could she have raised the money necessary to buy freedom? Besides--she buried her face among the pillows in vain desire to shut out the conviction which rushed in on her, as she recognised that if the plotters had gained what they wanted from the empty dandy outside the dressmaker's house, they would naturally be quite ready to deal with George and take money for a security they were already pledged to give. Which, in fact, they would have given, since the canons regulating bribery in India are strict in regard to value returned for value received. Every penny, therefore, of the money George must have paid for these papers, was so much clear unexpected gain to Manohar LÂl if the plotters had already attained their object.

Still she was safe, and even if anything happened nobody could blame George. Now she had had time to consider the whole bearings of the matter she told herself such blame was impossible; while as for Dan----! If he would only leave Government service and make money, she was ready to marry him to-morrow! She had woven a conscience-proof garment for herself out of the old hair-splitting arguments long before George's dhooli had reached the level plain. When it did, the clouds had banked themselves against the higher hills, shutting out the boy's farewell glance. As he climbed into the country gig in which forty miles of dusty road had to be covered, the barometer was falling fast, and the driver remarked cheerfully, that when the rain came, the cholera would increase. It had been bad at the third stage that day, and one of the coolies belonging to the Government bullock train had died on the road about five miles farther on. The sahib might perhaps still see the body lying there.