THE RÂM RUCKI

Jack Raymond's admission, 'C'est la peste, mademoiselle,' had been made under compulsion. Lesley, he had recognised, was not one to be put off by evasion; and yet his first impulse had been to keep his discovery to himself. For the sense of authority to deal with men and things, which he had had in the past, was apt to return to him when he found himself in a tight place. Therefore, the necessity for avoiding a scare had seemed to him paramount, and he had followed up his low-toned admission by a rapid request that Lesley should take Jerry home to bed, and say nothing to anybody of the adventure.

But by the time the green sleeves had disappeared, obediently, over the dim lawns that were just becoming visible in the dawn, his sense of responsibility had passed.

He told himself it was none of his business and that once he had handed over the case to the police, the matter would be ended so far as he was concerned. So far, also, as every one was concerned, if the authorities had any sense; since Lesley would hold her tongue, Jerry's ghost could be laid and laughed at, Budlu bribed, and JÂn-Ali-shÂn----

He looked round, wondering if the latter had gone or not, but could see nothing. An elaborately conscientious hawking and spitting, however, from the shadow of a distant bush, told him not only that John Ellison was there, but that he had grasped the situation.

''Ave a quid o' bitter yerbs, sir,' came the loafer's voice resignedly. 'It's a camphor bush, sir, an' there ain't no good in givin' in to plague an' pestilence without a

"Good Lord deliver us."

Is there, sir?'

The question had an almost pathetic apprehension in it.

'Not a bit,' assented Jack Raymond. 'Have a cigar instead, Ellison. I'll light one for you and chuck it over.' He knew his man; knew that without being a coward he was for the moment desperately afraid. Two very different things; since time cures one, and the other is persistent.

So for a minute or two there was silence. Then from the shadow of the camphor bush came a more confident cough.

'If you did 'appen to 'ave a drop o' brandy,' began the voice tentatively, 'though if you 'aven't, sir, it's "Thy will be done!" An' that bein' so, there's nothin' left but w'ot the nation you an' me's got to do next? 'Ow many corpses is there, sir?'

Jack Raymond smiled, feeling he had judged his man rightly.

'There is only the poor devil we chased left alive,' he answered; 'the two children, the woman, and a servant are dead. They have been there nearly a week. Refugees from down country who managed to slip past quarantine. He is a Nushapore man by birth, and, just as they were coming to the journey's end, one child fell sick. So, to escape inspection, he alighted at the last roadside station and walked in at night. He had to pass the Garden Mound, of course, and it struck him it would be safer to find out first if his people would take him in. So he, knowing the ropes, hid his family here for the day. Then his people were alarmed, another child sickened, et cetera. So he stopped on here, getting to and from the bazaar for what he wanted at night, dressed in an old white uniform----'

A low whistle came from the camphor bush, and a murmur, 'No, you don't, sonny! No, you don't!'

'Yes! it was rather a 'cute dodge, but he's an educated man. Well! the last child died yesterday, and he went off to get medicine for his wife, hoping to sneak back as usual. But the garden was full up with Chinese lanterns and bands; and they were dancing----'

'Deary dear!' interrupted the distant voice sympathetically, 'so 'e 'ad to lounge around, awaitin' for "Gord save our gracious Queen" to let 'im see if 'is lawful wife 'ad chucked it! Well, sir, black or white, it do seem cruel 'ard'--there was a pause, another ostentatious clearing of the throat--'but 'e knows the worst now, sir,' went on JÂn-Ali-shÂn, 'so why not 'ave the pore soul out

"where the breezes blow,"

on 'is parallel, as the sayin' is? It 'ud be more 'olesome, special if 'e's got to be took in 'and. As it say in 'Oly Writ,

"Separate ye the livin' from the dead an' the plague was stayed."

Beg pardin', sir, but 'avin' bin seven year in a surplus chore, it come natural-like.'

Jack Raymond thought that it did; thought, as he sat waiting, that the loafer, given a free hand, would probably settle the business as well as any one else. His suggestion was sound, anyhow. So, after a bit, there were three shadowy figures planted out on the lawns at respectful distances from each other. The last one, a dejected heap, huddled up on the grass, whimpering softly.

'If you 'ad another o' them hanti-microbber-tail-twisters about you, sir,' came the suggestive voice between vehement puffings at a cigar, 'it 'ud tickle 'im up, like as it done me. An' bein' a Bombay duck, as the sayin' is, 'e 'd smoke 'is grandmother's curl-papers! I know them down-country baboos. "Week in, week out, you can 'ear their bellows blow." An' "Gord save our gracious Queen" 'as bin cruel 'ard on 'em, sir--to say nothin' o' its bein' a sight safer to pizen 'is bla'ck-sill'ys.'

Jack Raymond smiled. JÂn-Ali-shÂn was wisdom itself. So the further shadow was supplied with a cigar, while a comparatively reckless voice hummed cheerfully--

'Seems to me, sir,' it broke off at last to say, 'that there's only us three to take count on, so to speak. Them pore things in there 'as sum-totalled up their little bills. An', as the minister's man said when they come worryin' round for a grave, an' 'e busy plantin' sprouts--"Corpses'll keep an' kebbiges won't!" so why not leave 'em comfortable for to-night? We don't want no crowd comin' round to see the place where we laid 'em, do we, sir? An' Madam Toosaw's ain't nothin' to bazaar folk for the chamber o' 'orrers if they get the chanst. Then as for 'im, pore devil, 'e must go to quarantine camp as a suspect anyhow, so it wouldn't make any odds to 'im, would it, sir? An' we could tell 'im to 'old 'is tongue or worse befall, couldn't we, sir? An' that 'ud tone down the colour a bit, as the sayin' is, more nor lettin' the police send round the town-crier.'

'How about Budlu?' asked Jack Raymond tentatively; but JÂn-Ali-shÂn was ready for him.

'Give 'im in charge 'isself, as 'e ought ter be, for disreliction o' duty in allowin' ghosts. That 'ud stop 'is mouth, sir; special as 'e don't know nothin'.'

The simplicity of the plan was obvious. It would even, Jack Raymond felt, take the responsibility of informing the police off his shoulders. He need only give the stowaway in charge, then go round to the civil surgeon, tell him the truth, and leave him to decide whether or not to hush up the matter absolutely--as he could easily do by the aid of quicklime and a few stones.

'In that case,' he said, after a pause for deliberation, 'the sooner we move off from this particular place----'

'Just so, sir!' interrupted JÂn-Ali-shÂn. 'Dro'r the enemy's fire h'off the weak spot. So, if you'll take 'im over to the general's 'ouse, an' settle 'is an' Budlu's 'ash when the perlice come, I'll 'ang round about them pore things inside, an' warble 'ymns an' psalms an' spiritooal songs till you've done the job. It won't 'urt 'em, sir,' he added apologetically, 'an' it'll kinder keep up my sperits.'

It appeared to do so, for when, a quarter of an hour afterwards Jack Raymond, after finishing his task, returned to that part of the garden on his way to the civil surgeon, he heard quite a cheerful version of 'Wrap me up in my tarpaulin jacket' coming from the camphor bush. And when, just as the sky was primrose with the first sunbeams, he returned once more to release JÂn-Ali-shÂn from his voluntary lyke-wake, he found him seated on the plinth of the mutiny memorial going methodically through 'John Brown's body,' as sung by convivial parties, with the elision of a word at each verse.

It was near its end, so that only 'John' had to be vocalised when Jack Raymond came up; but the beating of the silent tune went on vigorously while he told JÂn-Ali-shÂn that the civil surgeon had expressed his entire approval of the plan, which he characterised as a stroke of administrative genius!

'"But 'is soul goes marchin' on!"' burst out JÂn-Ali-shÂn, finishing his song at the proper beat. Then he rose, pulled his sleeves over his cuffs, and nodded his head gravely. 'That's 'ow it is, sir. 'Is soul goes marchin' on. That sort o' strokes come to a feller, they do, in the Garding Mound, an' will do, please God, as long as there's a white face among the black.'

So, singing 'Silver threads among the gold,' he sloped off through the cemetery, then over the wall to his work citywards, feeling that, so far as he was concerned, the incident was over.

But to Jack Raymond, as he went back to the club, came the remembrance that Lesley Drummond must be told that her question and his answer were to remain a secret between them. The idea annoyed him, all the more so because of the remembrance of Grace Arbuthnot's guilty face when Lesley had let the cat out of the bag concerning the origin of the green sleeves! Nevertheless, it was inevitable, so he sat down in an ill-humour, wrote a stiff explanatory note suggesting that Jerry's midnight chase should be treated as a nightmare due to turkey and ham, and sent it over to Government House. Yet, before doing so, he fumigated it carefully with tobacco, feeling the while a trifle ashamed of his own smile at the remembrance of those green sleeves.

But the wearer of them, restored to the dignity of a tailor-made coat and skirt, receiving the note while the tell-tale odour was still fresh on it--for she had found sleep impossible--frowned at the recollection of the figure in the political uniform which had refused even to touch those green sleeves. Frowned, not from displeasure, but from impatience at her own sense of pleasure in his thoughtfulness; for it was unfamiliar to her, that sense of rest in another person's care.

Treat it as a nightmare! Of course! How else could one treat that wild medley of green sleeves, political uniforms, ghosts, boys, valses À deux temps, JÂn-Ali-shÂns!

Only, no sane person would ever dream of dreaming such nonsense!

And yet, what was this unfamiliar tingle to her finger-tips, this curious elation, this sense of personal gain, as if she had found something new and precious--as if a child, idly unfolding a flower-bud, had found a fairy at its heart?

She turned from this fancy still more impatiently, resolving to set the whole incident aside. But this, she soon found, was quite impossible. That secret between her and Jack Raymond was inexorable in its claims. For instance, though the chance of any consequence to him was, she knew, small, she could not avoid watching for his figure to show in its usual haunts, listening if his name came up in conversation. Neither could she avoid relief at the certainty that nothing evil had befallen him. That, of course, was only natural; but it was intolerable that the relief should make her blush! Most intolerable of all when he noticed it and said, with a smile--

'No such luck for my friends, Miss Drummond!'

This happened at a tea-picnic which Lady Arbuthnot gave a day or two after the ball. More than one person had remarked to her on Jack Raymond's failure to put in an appearance. It was growing late. She was conscious of her own anxiety. And then, in a sudden surge, the blood flew to her face at the sight of him, close beside her, shaking hands with his hostess.

'What is the joke, Lesley?' asked Grace Arbuthnot quickly, looking from one to the other.

Once again Jack Raymond answered for her; answered audaciously.

'A dead secret, even from Lady Arbuthnot, is it not, Miss Drummond?'

'I would rather it was not,' she replied, turning away resentfully to wander off by herself into the garden where the tea-picnic was being given; a garden which had been the 'Petit Trianon' of the dead dynasty.

It was a quaint place, tucked away between two angles of the city wall for greater convenience in secret comings and goings to secret pleasures; and it was all the quainter now because of the Englishwomen sipping tea on the steps of the gilded summer-house, the Englishmen calling tennis scores in what had been the rose-water tank, in which kings' favourites had bathed, and on which they had floated in silver barges. The feeling of mutual incredibility, which in India comes so often to all but the unimaginative, came to Lesley, as she thought of the city so close behind the fringe of tall blossoming trees, yet so absolutely hidden by it.

Within half a mile of her lay the courtyard where Auntie KhÔjee was starving herself in the effort to get money wherewith to buy the essence of happiness; within half a mile of her Lateefa's kite, overlooked in the tornado of wrath which had followed on the disappearance of the ring, still tilted to leeward under the burden of sovereignty. But of all this--of the romance, the squalor, the humanity of the lives lived in the city--she knew nothing, except her own ignorance of those lives. That, and that only, was with her in the beauty of the garden; the beauty which was, as it were, the only thing that she and the unseen city had in common.

And it was beautiful, bosomed in those blossoming trees that shut out the world, shut in the scent of the flowers. It appealed instantly to something deep down in her woman's nature; for this had been a woman's garden!

The remembrance made her recoil spiritually. Partly from the thought of what the garden must have seen in the past, partly from the mere suggestion that it could appeal to anything in her. She walked on quickly, recoiling bodily, as she did so, from an overgrown rose-shoot which usurped the path. In so doing she displayed frills and flounces, a pair of dainty open-worked stockings and high-heeled shoes. But she did not recoil from the sight of these. Despite her views, despite her modern girl's theoretical contempt for chiffons, and disdain for women whose lives are bounded by the becoming, she was not one whit more logical on such points than her grandmothers had been. She had not thought out the real meaning of her frills and furbelows, or confessed to herself that such feminine footgear belongs inevitably to the path which leads to the 'Petit Trianon' of life.

Above all, she had not seen, as women must see before they become a power in the world, that the one point on which all races meet, no matter what their religion, no matter what their ideals, no matter what their standard of morality, is that which makes 'Petit Trianon' possible. In other words, the woman's attitude towards the man; an attitude so strangely at variance with the sex-laws of nature.

Yet of the beauty of this garden who could doubt? Within that fringe of blossoming trees, a wide aqueduct-like a shining cross-lay, edged by mosaicked marble causeways, that were raised above and in their turn edged by a perfect wilderness of flowers. And this wider cross, composed of flowers, mosaic, water, was set in dense thickets of oranges and pomegranates. In this late afternoon all the sunshine seemed concentrated in the cross. Great shafts of yellow light streamed down its limbs, seeming to darken all the rest. In the centre where the limbs met, a group of fountains sent fine feathers into the air, and through their sparkle the gold and marble of the summer-house gleamed amid its sentinels of cypress, at the far end of the garden. There was a cloying sweetness in the air. A flight of jewelled parrots flew screaming from one screen of flowering trees to the other, as if even they--winged creatures as they were--could not escape the thraldom of those high walls, hidden by leaf and blossom.

That sense of prisonment--the prisonment of pleasure--lay heavy on Lesley as she paused, half-unconsciously, before a tiny latticed retreat--the daintiest little retreat in the world--which, just at the opposite end of the shining cross from the gilt summer-house, rose out of the water. Made of marble fretwork, with a domed top, it looked like a lace veil moulded into the form of a singing-bird's cage; and its latticed seclusion was only connected with the causeway on either side of it, by a foot-wide ledge of mosaic.

Lesley, having been in the garden before, knew the purpose this retreat had served in the past, and her involuntary pause beside it prolonged itself in half-disdainful wonder. For this had been the sanctuary. Here had been refuge even from the pleasures of the garden, and hither, if any woman, high or low, chose to appeal for redress, majesty itself had been bound to come and listen, leaving majesty and manhood behind it.

That, at least, was the idea. The retreat itself was more suggestive of beauty gaining in power by seclusion; and Lesley's lip curled with more disdain as she looked at the finnikin filagree cage.

Her expression, however, changed to curiosity as she realised that some one was sitting inside it. She crossed the ledge of mosaic swiftly, and, stooping under the laced edge of a low arch, went in.

It was not beauty that she found. It was a wrinkled anxious-faced old woman, who rose in a salaam, then literally prostrated herself at the girl's feet. Lesley had been long enough in India, now, to judge rightly of the poverty shown in the dress. The blue-striped trousers, tight to the knee and full above, the short whity-brown cotton veil were to be seen--more or less dirty, more or less ragged--in every poor Mohammedan quarter. Yet there was something refined in the worn face, blurred with recent tears, which looked into hers apprehensively, as the owner rose to salaam again, leaving a small roll of paper bound with coloured silks upon the marble floor.

Lesley was puzzled for an instant; then it flashed upon her that this must be some belated petitioner for justice in the old style, who had heard, probably, that the Lord-sahib was in the garden. Such rolls of paper--without the silken tie, however--were often thrust into the carriage when Sir George was in it.

So she hunted round her sparse vocabulary, but finally fell back on the first phrase most newcomers to India learn, namely, 'Kya mankta?' (what do you want?)

It is an admirable beginning, though, unfortunately, the sympathetic curiosity of it seldom becomes impersonal to the speaker! It produced another salaam, and such a flood of polished speech that Lesley retired to English incontinently. 'Is it for the Lord-sahib?' she asked hurriedly, picking up the roll and pointing with it to the distant summer-house.

The title produced a fourth salaam, and Lesley, with some relief, stooped under the fretted arch again, and began to retrace her steps towards the others.

Sir George, she knew, had been doubtful if business would allow him to put in an appearance at the entertainment at all; but some one would be sure to know what message ought to be sent back to the petitioner, who, as Lesley left the bird-cage, settled herself down in it again to wait, with great precision.

'Read it, some one, please!' said Lady Arbuthnot, after she had undone the quaint little tasselled silk cord which was fastened with a loop and button round the roll of paper.

But the order was no such easy matter to obey. So far as the conventional 'Arz fidwe yih hai' (This is the request of your petitioner) went, the little group of administrators who responded to her request were fluent enough. After that came complaints of the character, and more than one suggestion that only a regular native reader could be expected to decipher such writing, and that it would be best to hand the document over to the office, which would be sure to make something of it,--a remark which made Lesley, who was listening, wonder whether the accuracy of that something was to be considered at all!

Grace Arbuthnot, however, listening also, let a curious smile come to her face; a smile that gave it an unusual tenderness. 'Where is Mr. Raymond?' she said suddenly. 'Going, did you say? Will some one call him back, please!'

He appeared, ready for his drive home in rather a violent blazer, and once more there was that unfailing challenge in his polite--'They tell me I am wanted, Lady Arbuthnot?'

'Yes! to read this,' she replied, holding out the hieroglyphic.

In all her life of beauty and grace she had possibly never looked more beautiful, more graceful, and Jack Raymond realised it; realised also that, so far as that beauty, that grace were concerned, he had not forgotten--that he would never forget! And the certainty roused all his antagonism. For a moment he stood like a naughty child refusing to say its lesson; then he took the paper from her, and ran his eye down it.

'Persian,' he said. 'I had better give you the gist of it. The writer is one KhÔjeeya KhÂnum, a pensioner. The NawÂb JehÂn Aziz is her representative; he seems to have been taking toll, as they always do--it is madness paying pensions in the lump, as we do. She is starving, I suppose; they generally are! No'--a faint interest dispersed some of the contempt in his face--'it seems she wants money for a specific purpose--to buy the "essence of happiness." That word is itr-i-khush, isn't it, sir?'

The commissioner, thus appealed to--a man who was seldom in fault in speaking the vernaculars--frowned over the symbol.

'Itr-i-khush, 'm, it may be. But it doesn't matter, since it is money she wants? I've had one or two complaints about that sweep JehÂn Aziz's pensioners already, Lady Arbuthnot, and we are going to inquire. So I'll put this one's name down too, if I may. KhÔjeeya KhÂnum--thanks. Well, good-night, Lady Arbuthnot! I've a reader with a file yards high waiting me--most important papers. Good-night, Raymond; you haven't forgotten the trick, I see. You are still as good a moonshi as ever, isn't he, Lady Arbuthnot?'

'Except in regard to the "Essence of Happiness,"' she replied coolly, making Jack Raymond stare at her, and Lesley once more become impatient.

'But the old woman is waiting,' she interrupted, 'she is waiting for an answer in the bird-cage; surely some one ought to go and tell her something!'

Several of the guests had taken advantage of the commissioner's departure to say their farewells also, so that those three were left in a group by themselves.

'I will go,' said Grace suddenly, 'if Mr. Raymond can spare time from his whist----'

'To find happiness,' he put in quickly, 'by all means!'

The mosaic causeway was narrow, so Lesley fell behind. The shining limb of the water-cross lay to one side of her, the edge of massed flowers to the other. The sky was deepening in its blue overhead, the creeping shadows below had gripped the lace bird-cage in the distance, making it look cold and grey. But the sun which caught the tops of the blossoming trees and made the painted kites that floated above them from the city look like jewels, seemed to linger mysteriously in the soft pink of Grace Arbuthnot's dress, the gay orange and yellow of Jack Raymond's blazer, and claim them as part of its brightness.

In the hush of evening, the insistent 'Do-you-love-too--do-you-love-too' of one small cinnamon dove hidden in a rosebush, seemed to fill the garden. Until from beyond it came some gay voices discussing the 'Essence of Happiness' as the departing guests got into their carriages.

'Take your choice of the four W's!' said one; 'wisdom, wine, wealth, women!'

'I choose a whisky-and-soda,' retorted another. 'I give you in the rest, especially after tennis. By Jove! that was a splendid game.'

'Four W's!' put in a higher key. 'You've forgotten Worth--oh! I don't mean that worth, of course. The dressmaker man----'

'Ye don't need his art, me dear lady----'

Lesley, walking behind those two, paused suddenly; for Jack Raymond had lingered to hold back that trailing rose-shoot from her frills and flounces also. And the cinnamon dove, startled by the pause, fled from the rose-bush to silence and deeper shade. Its flight made her start also.

'Frightened at a dove! said Jack Raymond in a low tone, 'and you weren't a bit frightened at the plague.'

He was smiling at her, his face all soft and kind. She had never seen it like that before. But as he stepped back to Grace Arbuthnot's side, Lesley realised that she had.

The certainty that these two had been lovers once came to her then, and brought a curious sense of loneliness. The certainly that, in a way, they would be lovers always, brought her a pang before which she stood aghast. For there was no mistaking it; it was unreasonable, elemental jealousy.

She felt inclined, then and there, to turn back and leave them to do their task alone. They did not want her. What was she, Lesley Drummond, doing there in that garden whose suggestiveness seemed to stifle her? Yes! to stifle her, because she could not escape from it! She, Lesley Drummond, who---- In her mind's eye she saw a vision of herself alighting from an omnibus at the corner of Bond Street on a wet day, picking her way over the greasy blister-marks of many feet on the pavement, heedless of the infinite suggestions in the shop windows, to have tea at a ladies'-club with an intimate friend, and solve the problems of life by hard and fast individualism tempered by a sloppy socialism.

Solve! As if it were possible to solve anything in those conditions. Above all, to solve the greatest problem in the world for women, as you drank your tea on a table littered with the literature of chiffon-culture, whose every page proclaimed that woman's aim was to remain temptress, her goal a garden such as this!

They were close to the sanctuary now. The others had entered it, and Lesley paused to look contemptuously at its filagree pretence of protection ere she, too, stooped under its low arch.

'I think you have it, haven't you, Lesley?' asked Grace Arbuthnot, as she entered to find a puzzled look on all three faces. In the old woman's it was mixed with a half-indignant apprehension.

'Have what?' she asked coldly.

'The silk cord that was round the roll; I gave it to you to hold, I think. She won't speak without it; it seems it is a bracelet--an amulet.'

'The bracelet of brotherhood without which a woman cannot speak to a strange man,' explained Jack Raymond. 'Ah! you are wearing it.'

She was. Quite idly she had fastened it by its loop and button round her wrist, in order to keep it safe. She took it off now, and handed it to him without a word. He passed it to Auntie KhÔjee, whose withered face settled into self-satisfaction as she leant forward, detaining his hand till the bracelet was safely looped on his brown wrist.

Then the words came fast. Floods of them; and Jack Raymond listened patiently.

Fine though the filagree of marble was that shut them off from the garden, it interrupted the light, so that their figures showed dimly to each other. But the scent of the garden drifted in unchecked, and mixed with the faint scent of heliotrope from Grace Arbuthnot's dress. There was something breathless, disturbing to the senses, Lesley felt, in that uncomprehending effort to understand. It was a relief when silence fell suddenly, and there was a pause.

'Is that all?' whispered Grace; she was next to Jack Raymond, her dress touching him.

'I believe I ought to give her a bracelet in return,' he began. She had one of her gold bangles off in a moment, and was thrusting it into his hand--'Take that, please do--you might let me do so much, surely----'

Lesley turned and stepped outside. She felt the need of fresh air.

'There was no use my stopping,' she explained when, after an interval, the two rejoined her. 'I could not understand.'

'Not understand!' echoed Grace Arbuthnot reproachfully. 'I couldn't understand the words either. But I thought the idea perfectly charming. I wouldn't have missed the little scene for worlds. And she was so delighted with the gold bangle.'

'It is really not uncommon, Lady Arbuthnot,' protested Jack Raymond, who was beginning to feel a trifle restive again. 'And in the old days, the rÂm rucki was constantly sent by distressed----'

'I know,' interrupted Lesley captiously. 'You read of it in Meadows Taylor's books. But why did she give it to you?'

He paused; a quick annoyance showed on his face; he turned to Lady Arbuthnot vexedly.

'I must apologise,' he said; 'I never realised till this moment that she must have taken me----'

'For Sir George,' put in Grace quietly. 'Didn't you? Now I was thinking all the time how much better you played the part than he would have done. He is like Lesley. He loathes sentiment. No, Mr. Raymond, I won't take it!' she added, as he tried to unfasten the rÂm rucki. 'Give it to Sir George himself, if you like--there he is, coming to meet us. Or,' she continued, with an elusive, almost mischievous smile, as she went forward to greet her husband, leaving those two on the path together, 'give it back to Miss Drummond! She gave it you first!'

Jack Raymond looked after her quite angrily; then laughed, drew out his pocket-book and laid the rÂm rucki between the folds of some bank-notes.

'I shall end by doing my duty some day, if this goes on, Miss Drummond,' he said resignedly. 'It is really very kind of you all to take so much interest in my spiritual and bodily welfare.'

As a rule Lesley would have been ready with a sharp retort. Now she was silent. She was thinking that it was true. She had given the bracelet of brotherhood to him first. And then once more a vast impatience seized her. How unreal, how fantastic it was? How far removed from the security of the commonplace?