“At last!” murmured Eveleen Ambrose with heartfelt relief, gaining the unsteady deck by dint of a frantic clutch at her husband’s arm, and cannoning helplessly against an unfortunate man who happened to be standing near the head of the ladder. “Oh, I beg your pardon!” as he staggered wildly and recovered himself, with a look of mortal offence on his face; “I am so sorry—I——”

“Steady!” said her husband sharply, retrieving her from an unintentional rush across the deck, and setting her up in a corner. “What’s the matter with you—eh?”

“The matter?” Eveleen’s Irish mind was so unhappily constituted that it saw humour where none was visible to others. She began to laugh weakly. “The matter? Oh, nothing at all, of course!”

“Hysterics now, I suppose.” Richard Ambrose’s voice was rough.

“I am never hysterical!” indignantly. “But after four days and nights of being tossed about like a cork in that cabin down there, till I know the feel of every inch of the floor and ceiling of it—and hard enough they are, I can tell you!—mayn’t I have your gracious leave to be just a little weeshy bit shaky?”

“Exaggeration is not wit,” he growled. “You have my free leave to feel as you like, provided it don’t make you go about knocking people down.”

Tears—never very far from laughter in Irish eyes—rose rebelliously, and Eveleen turned quickly to gaze at the shore whose first appearance she had hailed with so much joy. There was nothing particularly attractive about the long line of mud-coloured coast backed by low mud-coloured hills, beyond a wide—still horribly wide—waste of tumbling waters; but it was land, blessed solid land! The man against whom she had cannoned spoke suddenly—she had the instant idea that he had been trying to make up his mind whether the circumstances warranted his addressing her without an introduction.

“The fact is, ma’am, ladies have no business in these steamboats. The cabin may have seemed uncommon incommodious to you, but in order that you and your companions might enjoy it, four of the gentlemen on board had no cabin at all.”

“Oh!” in dismay. “But ’twas not for you to tell me that!” she flashed out at him.

“I had a reason, ma’am—to convince you that you should not be here.”

“And pray, sir, what other way would we poor females get to Khemistan?”

“My point precisely, ma’am.” He spoke under difficulties, swaying to and fro and holding fast to the rail. “Khemistan is no place for European females—nor will be for years to come. But when charming ladies take it into their pretty heads to go there, what is poor Hubby to do? ‘My dear, believe me, I can’t take you with me.’ ‘Oh, but you will, won’t you?’ ‘Quite impossible, my dear.’ ‘Ah, but you can do it if you like, I know. And you must.’ And he does—naturally.”

Richard Ambrose chuckled disagreeably, and the colour rose in his wife’s cheeks. “It’s a bachelor y’are, sir, by your own confession,” she said sweetly to the stranger. “No married man would dare to draw such a picture. The best I can wish you is that you may find how true it is!” She meant to end with a little contemptuous curtsey, but the moment she loosed her hold of the shawl over her head, the wind caught it and hurled it full in the stranger’s face. This time he did lose his footing, and went slipping and sliding across the deck till he was brought up by the bulwarks.

“One for you, Crosse!” cried Richard Ambrose loudly, and holding his wife with one hand, secured the loose end of shawl and tucked it in with the other. “Can’t you look after your own fallals?” he demanded. “It ain’t enough to make out that you wanted to come and I couldn’t do without you—eh?”

“I did want to come,” persisted Eveleen stoutly. “And pray would you have me tell people y’are bringing me here for a punishment because you can’t find a keeper in Bombay to look after me?”

“Pray remember you are not a child,” he said—so coldly that she grew red again, and moved as far from him as the necessity of submitting to his protecting arm would allow. But it was difficult to maintain an attitude of dignified displeasure in the circumstances.

“Why, we are anchoring already!” she cried in dismay a moment later. Her husband smiled superior.

“Precisely, my dear. Now you will have an opportunity of experiencing the full pleasure of landing at Bab-us-Sahel. It might be worse, however, for the tide is fairly high.”

Privately Eveleen wondered how low water could possibly make the landing worse, when the passengers and their luggage had been transferred from the rolling steamer to an equally unsteady tug, and thence into large open boats, in which the water seemed terribly near—and actually was, as she discovered on finding the wet mounting higher and higher up her skirts. They were to land at a pier, she knew, which was comforting, but alas! there was another transhipment before reaching it, this time into light canoes, since the boats drew too much water to enter the creek in which it stood. Dazed, shaken, and sea-sick, Eveleen had no pride left. With closed eyes, she leaned her swimming head against her husband’s shoulder as they came into smoother water, and told herself that this misery had lasted so long she would not be surprised if the tide had gone out. What would they do then? she speculated in a detached kind of way—change into some other kind of craft, or paddle up and down and dodge the rollers until the flow?

“There’s Bayard waiting to meet us!” said her husband sharply. She opened one eye weakly, and discerned figures on the pier.

“‘The celebrated Colonel Bayard!’” she quoted in a dreamy whisper, and shut it again.

“But not Mrs Bayard!” Richard was evidently injured.

“Perhaps—the sight of—this sea—makes her—ill. I would not—wonder,” murmured Eveleen.

“Nonsense, my dear! Considering my friendship with Bayard, and the kindness she professed towards you when she heard——”

“Her husband maybe teased her—to come—so she wouldn’t,” and even in her misery Eveleen was conscious of triumph. It was something to have reduced Richard to speechless indignation, were it but for a moment.

“Halloo, Ambrose! Glad to see you, my dear fellow!” The words sounded startlingly near, and looking up quickly, she saw a small stoutish dark-moustached officer hanging perilously on what looked like a ladder just above them. As the canoe rocked this way and that with the motion of the waves, he seemed to be performing the wildest acrobatic feats, as though it were the pier and not the boat that rose and fell. She closed her eyes again hopelessly.

“Your poor wife overcome by all this landing business? I don’t wonder. Lift her up, man. Now, ma’am, give me your hand, and we’ll have you on firm ground in no time.”

The deep commanding voice mastered even her helpless lassitude, and she looked up into the kindest eyes she had ever seen. Her hand was seized in a strong clasp, and somehow—between Richard and Colonel Bayard—she was hoisted up the ladder before she had time to notice with horror how very rickety it was.

“‘Firm ground!’” she said reproachfully when she reached the top, for the pier seemed to be swaying every way at once, and between its sun-warped timbers the water was disconcertingly visible.

“In a moment, in a moment!” said Colonel Bayard soothingly, as though speaking to a child. “I brought my wife’s palanquin for you, but I had not realised how bad the landing would be. Would you prefer to wait here while I have it fetched?”

“Indeed I would not—not here!” said Eveleen with a shudder, and supported by the two men, she stumbled uncertainly along the pier.

“I trust Mrs Bayard ain’t ill?” said Richard.

“You could answer that better than I, my good fellow, for you must have passed her on your way up from Bombay. I had to send her down by the next steamer after you had started. So end my hopes of making a home up here. Heigh-ho!”

He gave a great sigh, and Eveleen looked up at him sympathetically. Not noticing that they had come to the end of the pier, she stumbled wildly in the loose sand, and fell. The Resident had her up again in a moment.

“My dear lady, forgive me!” he cried, in deep contrition. “I fear Khemistan is giving you a sorry welcome.”

“Ah, but think how I’ll be adoring the place when I fall on my knees at the first sight of it!” she said, laughing feebly, while her husband—in awful silence—did his best to brush the wet sand from her gown.

“That’s the spirit!” said Colonel Bayard approvingly. “Mrs Ambrose is cut out for the frontier, Richard. Now, ma’am!”

He was handing her into the waiting palki, while she looked longingly at the ponies waiting for the two men. If only there were one for her! But Colonel Bayard would probably be scandalised, and Richard certainly would, if she proposed to ride through the town on a man’s saddle, with a stirrup thrown over to serve as pommel.

“The many times I’ve done it at home!” she lamented to herself. “And sure this place might be in Ireland, only that it’s brown instead of green.”

But she settled herself meekly on the cushions, and closed her eyes, that the swaying of the palki might not recall too vividly the motion of the steamer. She was not losing much, she told herself, for the inhabitants of Bab-us-Sahel appeared to live either in mud-heaps or within high mud walls, both windowless, and there was not a tree to be seen. She must have gone to sleep before very long, for she woke with a start when the reed blind was drawn aside, and Colonel Bayard’s face appeared in the doorway—a sepoy guard standing to attention behind him.

“Welcome to Government House, Mrs Ambrose! Let me say as the Spaniards do, ‘This house is yours, ma’am.’ Turn it upside down if you like, and do me the favour of chivying the servants as much as you please. My wife always declares I spoil ’em when she ain’t with me.”

“Ah, but tell me now—will you let me ride your horses?” demanded Eveleen, pausing as he helped her out. The mud-built town was below them now, for they were at the top of a long slope. An immensely wide road with ostentatiously white houses on either side, so rigidly spaced that they looked like tents in a camp, led down to a muddy swamp, and by a causeway across it to the mud-heap which was Bab-us-Sahel. Some attempt had been made by most of the householders to enclose their domains with a hedge, but the only available plant seemed to be a weak and straggly kind of cactus, which left more gaps than it filled. Government House was mud-built and white-washed like the rest, long and narrow and surrounded by verandahs, and boasted an imposing flagstaff in front, together with a circular enclosure, intended as a flower-bed, in which grew a few debilitated shrubs. Glaring sunshine and shadeless sand were the salient features of the scene from which Eveleen withdrew her eyes as she looked up at her host.

“With all my heart, if I had any,” he responded genially. “But I’ll confess I am a precious lazy fellow when there’s no hunting in question. Bring me khubber of a tiger, and I’ll ride all day and all night to get at him, but here——! My dear ma’am, this respectable elderly gentleman”—he indicated the pony from which he had just dismounted—“represents my whole stable, and you can see by his figure that he don’t get much to do.”

“And such a galloping country!” Deep commiseration was in Eveleen’s tone as she looked down the other side of the rise to the bare rolling sandy plain. “I’ll have to wait till my own horses are landed, then, before challenging you to a race.”

“Mrs Ambrose is going to wake us all up, I see, Richard!” Colonel Bayard beamed as he handed her into the house. He had to perfection the gift of doing little things greatly, and Queen Victoria herself could not have been ushered in with more empressement. “Now if anything is not as you like it, ma’am, command me and all I have, I beg of you. You won’t feel bound to show yourself at table if you ain’t equal to it? Ambrose and I will devour our grub in solitude, like a pair of uncivilised bachelors again.”

“As if I’d allow that! Sure I’ll be there!” and Eveleen nodded brightly as she disappeared under the curtain that hung before the doorway of her room. Her mercurial spirits were recovering fast from the gloom of the voyage. Everything was interesting, and therefore cheerful—the new country, the unfamiliar house, this dear chivalrous Colonel Bayard. What a shame it was that his wife had let herself be sent away! “Sure I’d have stuck to him with teeth and claws!” she said to herself, and broke into her ready laughter at the thought of the inconvenience of such a devotion to its object.

Several hours of healthy slumber left Eveleen almost restored to her usual self, though still a little languid and pale. Her luggage had arrived while she slept, and also her ayah, who was much less welcome. Ketty was an elderly Goanese woman of vast experience and monumental propriety, and Eveleen suspected that Richard Ambrose had chosen her out to keep his erratic wife in order. Her last mistress had been the lady of a Member of Council, and what Ketty did not know of the manners and customs proper to ladies in high places was not worth knowing. Mutely, but firmly, she indicated on all occasions what ought to be worn, and also the appropriate style of hair-dressing, quite regardless of the wishes of her Madam Sahib—the very word showed in what high society she had moved, for in all but very lofty households the English lady was still alluded to as the Beebee. But to-day Eveleen’s reviving spirits led her to trample ruthlessly on Ketty. The ayah had laid out a white gown, and it was summarily rejected. Eveleen had all the Irishwoman’s love of easy old clothes, and in the open trunk she caught sight of a beloved garment that had once been a rather bright blue, but was now faded to a soft dull shade, the proximity of which only a milky skin and Irish blue eyes could endure with impunity. That dress she would wear and no other.

“A stiff starchy thing like that white brilliant!” she was talking to herself again, as she often did, since Ketty’s lack of response tried her sorely after the companionable garrulity of Irish servants. “No, I’ll be comfortable to-night—haven’t I earned it? Sure I’d be a regular ghost in white, and why would I want to haunt poor Colonel Bayard’s house before I’m dead?” Then severely, “Ayah, I said the blue. So that’s done!” triumphantly. “And now what to wear with it? I know what I’d like,” turning over the trinkets which Ketty, with an aloof and reserved air—as of one who refused all responsibility for such doings—laid before her, “and that’s you, you beauty. Isn’t it a real match for my eyes y’are, as Uncle Tom said when he gave you to me?” She took up a disc of flawed turquoise, some two inches across, set in silver and hanging from a steel chain, and looked at it affectionately, but put it down again. “No, Ambrose would have too much to say about my childish taste for ‘something large and smooth and round,’ and why would I provoke him when I needn’t? So we’ll be quite proper and suitable, and wear his bracelet with his hair and his portrait in it. Ah, my dear, what has happened you that you’d be so changed since you gave me that?” This was added in a painful whisper, but in a moment Eveleen had brushed the tears hastily from her eyes and turned to the door, accepting impatiently the handkerchief with which Ketty hurried after her.

Colonel Bayard was the prince of hosts. He told Eveleen that were he only a younger man, he would have a dozen duels on his hands the next morning for depriving the rest of the European community, if only for one day, of the honour of meeting her at supper—and all owing to his thinking she might be fatigued, which he saw now was quite unnecessary. Perhaps the voyage had been better than he feared. It could have been worse, she assured him, and described its horrors dramatically for his amusement and sympathy.

“And there was a cross officer—oh, and his name was Crosse!” she laughed delightedly—“said that ladies had no business on board ship. There’s a nasty wretch for you!”

“Poor Crosse was uncommonly riled—had no cabin all the voyage,” explained her husband. “But he got precious little compassion from Mrs Ambrose.”

“And he deserved none—did he, ma’am?” said Colonel Bayard heartily. “Now I know why Crosse chose to go on at once and catch the steamer starting for Qadirabad to-morrow evening. He was afraid he’d be hooted out of decent society if it was known he had said such an atrocious thing. But talking of steamers, Mrs Ambrose, don’t use up all your adjectives too soon, or you’ll have none left for the river craft, and the Bombay boats are palaces to ’em!” Precise people still talked about “steamboats” in the early ’forties, but the word steamer had established itself in familiar use, and Eveleen took it up promptly.

“But what I want to know is, why wouldn’t you have better steamers, if that’s your only way of getting about?” she demanded. “And tell me, why wouldn’t you have a better landing-place here?”

“Why should we?” Colonel Bayard bristled up unaccountably. “The place ain’t ours.”

“But sure it’s as good as ours!”

“Not a bit of it. It’s entirely our own fault that we are here, and if we set to work to improve the place, the people to whom it belongs would suspect us of wanting to land more troops and take possession of it—most naturally, in my opinion. Therefore I won’t have it touched. It’s the same with the steamers. The people here don’t want ’em—don’t share our craze for getting about quickly—and the landowners swear the wash damages the river banks.”

“That old codger Gul Ali Khan making bobbery about his shikargah again?” asked Richard Ambrose sympathetically, and thereafter the talk became local and technical in the extreme, while Eveleen listened fascinated. This was what she loved—and her husband would never talk to her about his work, and was chary of affording information even when she asked for it. Now he forgot her intrusive presence, and talked simply and naturally, while she sat with her head a little on one side and drank in admiringly what he said.

Presently they were speaking of public affairs, and of the Governor-General’s tardy permission to the punitive expedition against Ethiopia to take—at its commander’s pleasure and on his responsibility—a return route which might serve to bring home the abiding nature of British power to a people hugging delicious memories of a disaster which had shaken the white man’s prestige throughout Asia.

“They were saying at Bombay that Lord Maryport consulted old Lennox before he consented—or at any rate that Lennox had given him the advice,” said Richard.

“Much more likely!” said Colonel Bayard quickly. “Well, he will always have that to his credit, at any rate—that we were not left to be the laughing-stock of the East. Oh, I have nothing against the old fellow, provided he stays down where he is, and don’t come meddling up here.”

“But don’t you like Sir Harry Lennox, Colonel Bayard?” asked Eveleen—her tone suggesting that she did.

“Don’t I say I have nothing against him, my dear lady? But there’s no earthly reason for the Bombay C.-in-C. to come poking about in Khemistan. It ain’t his to poke about in, for one thing.”

“That little difficulty wouldn’t stop him,” said Ambrose drily. “You should hear the Bombay people talk. He’s fluttering their dovecots for ’em, and no mistake.”

“Oh, well, we all know there are plenty of dark corners that want sweeping out, and he’s welcome to do it. Did you get a sight of him when you were down there?”

“He happened to be in the town, so I went to pay my respects. The queerest old ruffian you ever saw—black as a nigger, with a beak like any old Jew in the bazar, and whiskers streaming every way at once.”

“It’s to hide the scar he got at Busaco he wears them long,” broke in Eveleen indignantly. “He has been severely wounded seven times—it’s covered with scars he is entirely.”

“And would feel himself amply repaid if he knew Mrs Ambrose kept count of ’em, I’ll be bound,” said Colonel Bayard gallantly. “Is the old General a friend of yours, ma’am?”

“He is, indeed. At least, I met him when I was at Mahabuleshwar, and he was very kind. He might have been an Irishman.”

“Really? Well, they say that, thanks to being born in Ireland, he has all the Irish vices without a drop of Irish blood in his veins.”

“Mrs Ambrose is Irish—you may not be aware——” broke in Major Ambrose hastily.

“My dear lady, forgive me!” Colonel Bayard’s gesture of contrition would have disarmed a heart of stone. “What have I said—anything to wound——?”

“Not a bit of it!” Eveleen flashed back at him. “We are not wild Irish, don’t you know—the tame kind. We were always taught to behave nicely and try to be English.”

“Mrs Ambrose would jest on her deathbed, I believe,” said her husband, rather uncomfortably.

“Absit omen!” Colonel Bayard looked quickly at Eveleen to see whether the words had hurt her, but she smiled back with twinkling eyes.

“Now you see what Ambrose is in private life—always talking about deathbeds and the poorhouse and cheerful things of that sort. There! I’ve forgotten again. The poorhouse is a solemn subject, and not to be mentioned in the same breath with a joke.”

She glanced with mock apology at her husband, but there was a touch of defiance in the tone, and Colonel Bayard hastened to smooth matters over. “Well, ma’am, I have forgot what it was I said—though I’m sure you remember it—but you’ll oblige me by considering it unsaid. I’ll swear Sir Harry Lennox is the greatest hero since Achilles if that will please you—provided he keeps away from Khemistan.”

“Ah, but why?” with poignant reproach. “If he comes, he’ll be bringing Brian with him—my brother.”

“My dear, what nonsense are you talking?” interjected her husband. She drew back a little.

“It was nonsense, of course. Why would he come at all? But if he did come—why, Sir Harry loves his Irishmen, as everybody knows.”

“Still I hope he won’t bring ’em here. We want no more British troops in Khemistan, Mrs Ambrose. When we came here three years ago it was doing one injustice in order to do another. We wanted to use Khemistan as a stepping-stone to get at Ethiopia, and when we had done it we refused to go away. We forced a treaty upon the Khans, and we kept this place. Do you wonder that the sight of more redcoats would convince ’em that we meant to take the whole country?”

“I’m crushed! I’m crushed!” she held up her hands suppliantly. “But please, I don’t want to take the whole country—nor any of it, except perhaps a paddock big enough to put up some jumps in.”

“How can you be so childish, my dear?” demanded her husband impatiently, but Colonel Bayard bent his head with a deferential gesture.

“No, my dear Ambrose, I am justly rebuked. As Mrs Ambrose sees, I am liable to grow improperly warm on this subject. But she will pardon me when she learns the nature of my charge here. I stand as guardian, ma’am, to the entire ruling family, and I swear I love ’em as if they were my own children.”

“The whole lot of ’em—from frowsy old Gul Ali down to little fat Hafiz-Ullah,” assented Richard.

“Your husband may laugh at me, ma’am, but I swear he values the friendship of my dear Khans as much as I do.”

“Do I? Well, you know my opinion,” said Ambrose dispassionately. “Good sportsmen, most of ’em, but precious tough customers.”

“Only where they have been wrongly handled——” and off the two men went again into a discussion of the character, public and private, of the Khans of Khemistan. The house seemed to present a bewildering complexity of uncles and brothers and nephews, but Eveleen gathered that Gul Ali Khan, the eldest brother—or uncle?—was the acknowledged head of a confederacy of rulers, though the position would not necessarily descend to his children, but to the eldest male member of the family who happened to be alive at his death. The arrangement seemed to have its temptations for enterprising young Khans not overburdened with scruples, and Colonel Bayard was persuaded that on Gul Ali’s death there would be a tussle for the chiefship between his brother, Shahbaz Khan, and his son, Karimdâd. But when he had reached this interesting point, he suddenly awoke again to Eveleen’s presence. “My dear Mrs Ambrose, you must be bored to death! Pardon me.”

“I love listening to it,” she assured him truthfully, but she rose and collected handkerchief and fan. If only he would disregard her presence as completely as he did that of the silent statuesque servants behind the chairs, how much she might learn of this new life to which she had come! There was a touch of reproach in her manner as she passed him, and he saw it. Mrs Ambrose interested him. What could be the reason of the evident coolness between her and her husband? he asked himself, as he looked after the graceful figure with its pale draperies, and the crown of dark hair, insecurely fastened, as it appeared, with a high Spanish comb.

“What can it be?” he wondered as he returned slowly to his place, remembering the obvious wrath and disquiet with which Richard Ambrose had asked for leave to Bombay on urgent private affairs, and the embarrassment with which he had requested permission to bring his wife back with him if necessary. “Quite a suitable age for Ambrose—I was afraid he might have got caught by a schoolgirl; and must have been uncommonly pretty a few years ago—is so now, indeed. Most elegant woman, and very agreeable—really charming manners—and fond of him——”

It had all passed through his mind while he turned from the door and the servants were withdrawing noiselessly, and in his impulsive way he stopped and laid his hand on Ambrose’s shoulder.

“You and I are old friends, my boy—let me say one word. I don’t know what tales you may have heard when you rushed off to Bombay, but believe me, they were lies. Your wife is a good woman—if ever I have met one—and she adores you.”

Ambrose laughed, not very pleasantly. “You are agitating yourself unnecessarily,” with some stiffness. “I am quite aware my wife adores me—worse luck! I mean she makes me a laughing-stock in company,” he added hastily.

“Many a man would give a good deal to be made a laughing-stock in that way,” a little sternly. “But why, then——?”

“Money, my good sir—nothing but money! She was ruining me. I swear to you, I should have been broke in another year of it.”

“The ladies must always be buying pretty clothes, bless ’em! And a fine creature like that——! But if you explained——”

“It was not clothes,” resentfully. “The difficulty with Mrs Ambrose is to induce her to wear clothes suited to her position. But what do you say to her paying the debts of the young scamp of a brother she mentioned, who is playing the fool with the best in an Irish regiment?”

“That I should have a word to say to the brother before visiting his sins on the sister.”

“I should like you to try it, and see how much Mrs Ambrose would allow you to say! And what do you think of her rebuilding the stables of the bungalow—a hired bungalow, mind you—I took for her? and saying that in Ireland they kept the horses warm and dry, however poorly they themselves were lodged?”

“An amiable weakness, surely?”

“Mere childishness, believe me. She has no more idea of the value of money than an infant in arms! When it’s there she spends it, and when it ain’t she writes chits! She would buy anything—a mangy starved pony, and vow it was an Arab, if you please!”

“And it was a common bazar tat?”

“Well,” reluctantly, “now that the beast’s bones ain’t coming through its skin, there’s a look of blood about it, I admit. But——”

“Trust an Irishwoman’s eye for a horse! But seriously, my dear fellow, to what better use can you put your money than allow your goodwife to make herself happy by spending it? I know if mine would do me the honour——”

“Ah, it’s the other way with you, I know. But for Mrs Bayard’s prudence, you would leave Khemistan a poorer man than you entered it.”

“She would tell you it will be so in any case,” said Colonel Bayard ruefully.

CHAPTER II.
THE RIFT IN THE LUTE.

But if a difference about money was the immediate cause of the strained relations between Major Ambrose and his wife, no one would have denied more vehemently than Eveleen herself that it was the beginning of their estrangement. That had happened long ago—even, so she sometimes thought, before their marriage. This might seem an Irish way of putting it, but at times she would tell herself that she must have been blind not to see there was something wrong with Richard then, though again the idea would look absolutely absurd. For why should he have married her unless he wanted her as she did him? She would never have lifted a finger to hold him had he wished to be free! She raged against him a little now as she stood solitary in the middle of the absent Mrs Bayard’s drawing-room, seeing nothing of her surroundings. If he must be sarcastic and cross, why try to humiliate her in the presence of a stranger, instead of keeping his horrid remarks till they were alone together, and she could answer them as they deserved? There was little of the patient Griselda about Eveleen Ambrose.

“Such an English room!” Her wrath was suddenly diverted—though rather to the general atmosphere of bleak tidiness than to poor Mrs Bayard’s treasured “Europe” furniture—and she shuddered. “Sure I’ll choke here!” She fled to the verandah. “Ah, now!” and she stood spellbound by the wonderful moonlight shining on a limitless sea that washed the very hill-top on which the house stood. A moment’s reflection assured her that the sea was a thick mist enshrouding the town and the low-lying land about it, and hiding the mud and dust and crudeness which had been so painfully evident by day, and she dropped into a chair to watch it, for there were little eddies which looked exactly like moving water. She had not meant to stay in the drawing-room; her intention had been to slip away to bed, leaving an excuse with the servants for her host’s benefit, but it was so peaceful here, and she needed a little mental refreshment before coping once more with Ketty. But her meditations hardly brought her the peace she desired, for almost at once she was involved again in the perpetual quest of When? and How? and Why?

It was twenty years since Richard Ambrose and Eveleen Delany had first met in the hunting-field—and parted almost as soon. She was a pretty girl riding as daringly as the conventions of the time and a fierce old uncle would allow her, he one of the junior officers of the regiment quartered in the neighbourhood. Two or three days’ hunting, a scrambled meal or two taken in common, sandwiches shared in the shelter of a deep lane—Richard’s fingers had actually trembled so that he could scarcely untie the string, she remembered,—such a brief and broken acquaintance to change the whole course of one life, if not two! He had nothing but his pay and his debts, she was an orphan adopted into an already overflowing and impoverished household in a spirit of mingled improvidence and charity. To do him justice, Richard had no hope of being allowed to marry her then, but he would pay his debts with the sale of his commission, and transfer to the Indian Service, and come or send for her as soon as he could see his way clear. Had he been an Irishman the engagement might have been allowed, but old General Delany discerned a calculating and parsimonious spirit in his anxious planning, and sent him about his business with slight sympathy. To this day Eveleen could not think calmly of their parting. Something of the old agony shook her again as she heard her own voice—hoarse with the strain of trying to speak bravely for her lover’s sake—assuring him again and again that she would wait any length of time, five years, a hundred years, for ever, for him to return and claim her. He had sworn to come back, sworn that her image would be ever before his eyes until that blessed moment arrived; had sobbed—Richard Ambrose sobbing!—as he tore him self away when they kissed for the last time. Thus they parted—the boy setting his face resolutely eastwards, with the safeguard of a high purpose in his soul, the girl taking up the harder task of doing nothing in particular.

Those many, many years of waiting! Eveleen could not look back on them dispassionately even now. She was again the girl who watched feverishly for the ramshackle “ass’s cart” which conveyed the rural post-woman on her rounds, who manœuvred for the privilege of asking for letters at the post-office when the family drove into town. And there never were any letters. Deeply in love as he was, Richard Ambrose had been cut to the quick by General Delany’s contemptuous dismissal, and registered a vow that he would never return until he could confront the old man with abundant proof that he could keep Eveleen in proper comfort. That time did not come. Things were bitterly hard for the Company’s Army in time of peace. Its officers were the unfailing victims of the constant demands from home for economy and retrenchment, until no man remained with his regiment who had influence to obtain civil employ. Richard Ambrose was uniformly unfortunate. He had no influence, and a malign fate seemed to shut him out of the little wars of the period—often lucrative enough. Once he had been mauled out tiger shooting, and was in hospital; once, after several unusually obstinate bouts of fever, he was an invalid in Australia. But his was not one of the crack regiments, and the greater part of his time was spent in one dull station or another, doing the work of two or three seconded men as well as his own. Faithful alike to his self-imposed vow and to General Delany’s commands, he never wrote to Eveleen.

Eveleen gave no sign of resenting his silence. When she refused one or two good matches, her relatives were loud in scorn of her folly, but by-and-by they arrived at the comfortable conviction that all was for the best. Her cousins were marrying off or setting up homes of their own, and the General was becoming increasingly difficult to live with. It was really providential that the niece who owed him so much should be available to ride with him, to keep house for him in the scrambling style from which neither of them dreamed of departing, and in the long evenings to take a hand at whist if other players were available, join him in chess or backgammon if they were not, and at all times turn away his wrath with cheerful—if not invariably soft—answers. If her recompense seemed inadequate, there was Brian to be thought of—the young brother for whose sake Eveleen would sometimes even attempt that hardest of all tasks, saving money. “I would rob the mail for Brian!” she declared once defiantly to her uncle, and thanks to her unceasing efforts, Brian was given—and, urged tearfully by her, submitted to receive—some sort of education, sufficient at any rate to enable him to take advantage of the offer of an old comrade of the General’s to attach him to his staff as a Volunteer, until he could obtain a commission. It was a difficult business to supply the young gentleman’s needs while he was expected to live as an officer on the pay of a private, and the habits he picked up on the staff were not exactly such as would conduce to his efficiency in a marching regiment, but the day she first saw her boy in the uniform of the 990th Foot, Eveleen felt she could die happy.

Perhaps the attainment of this ardent desire made her feel more like Brian’s mother or aunt than his sister, but it was about this time that Eveleen became aware she was growing old. Not in mind—she was one of those who, far from growing old, never even really grow up—nor in body, for she could last out a long day with the hounds as well as most men, and skin and hair and eyes showed slight trace of the process of time, but in the estimation of her little world. Nowadays she would have been considered a girl still, but in her day to pass the thirtieth birthday unmarried was to be stamped irrevocably as an old maid, and she had done this five years ago. Other girls were coming forward—real girls—and she found herself confronted with the choice of ceding her place to them or holding it by mingled assurance and main force, becoming in course of time “Old Miss Evie”—one of those determined middle aged sportswomen whom English people regarded as an eccentric and scandalous feature of Irish hunts. Eveleen laughed and withdrew. Her choice was made easier by the complication of diseases and old wounds which incapacitated the General, for ladies did not hunt without male escort, and she would not tack herself to any of his friends; but it was a bitter moment. Nor was it made easier by the discovery that she was becoming an object of suspicion—or at least mistrust—to her cousins and her cousins’ wives. To them, as to all their class, money as money was nothing, but family possessions were something to be clutched and held by fair means or foul. The idea that Eveleen might be providing for herself—or her uncle providing for her—at their future expense worked like poison in their brains, leading them to lay ingenious conversational traps in the hope of surprising the admission that the General had added a codicil to his will, and to conduct furtive searches for household treasures which they imagined to have disappeared. It was inevitable that when Eveleen realised what was in their minds, she should resent it violently, and for a whole day such a battle-royal raged as was spoken of with respect among the servants ever after. Alone against the cousinhood, she held her ground victoriously, swearing to leave the house there and then unless all imputations were withdrawn and an ample apology offered. Where she could have gone she knew no more than her cousins, but she would have done it; and they realised the fact, and having no desire to take up her burden, listened to the moderating counsels of brothers and husbands, hovering in the background with insistent murmurs of “Ah, well, then——” and “Sure, the creature——” But her future was still a cause for anxiety, if not for suspicion. “Sure I see ‘What’ll we do with poor Evie?’ in every eye that looks at me!” she said once.

And then Richard Ambrose came back. He had found his opportunity at last. The Ethiopian adventure, which was the grave of so many reputations, made his. He went into it an undistinguished captain, and he came out a major and a C.B., whose resolute defence early in the war of an all-important post on the line of communications had even been heard of at home. He was wounded—but the present generation would have hailed his wound as a “Blighty one”; it was just sufficiently severe to induce the surgeons to advise a voyage home and back before he took up the new post of Assistant Resident in Khemistan which Colonel Bayard promised to keep open for him. Eveleen could never quite decide whether she had been expecting him to return or not. So many years had passed, and he had never sent her word or sign. But one morning, as she sat in her saddle at the covert-side, a little removed from the throng of cheery riders, watching the meet in which she no longer took part, one figure detached itself from the rest. A gentleman dismounted, and throwing the bridle to his servant, approached her—a tall bronzed man, wearing the frogged blue coat which was the recognised dress of officers in mufti, or as they called it, “coloured clothes.” He raised his hat, and the years fell from Eveleen. She was the girl of seventeen again, glowing with youth.

“You have waited for me, Eveleen?” he asked, without any conventional greeting, and she dropped the reins on her horse’s neck and held out both hands to him.

“All these years. Ah, but I knew you’d come!” she answered. For that moment, at least, she had no doubt. Richard had justified himself, had come back, famous and successful, to the woman whose welcome would have been no less warm had he been broken and penniless, and to that woman earth was heaven from henceforth. That the Richard who had come back would not be the Richard who had gone forth was unlikely to occur to her at that moment, or to commend itself to her belief when it did occur. She had not changed; why should he?

Everything was so natural, so simple. Richard never even asked her again to marry him. Why should he? he had come back for nothing else. It was necessary to ask the General for her, of course, and the General resented the request so vehemently that all his children and their respective husbands and wives had to be summoned to bear down his opposition by sheer weight of eloquence. Such ingenuity was displayed in devising schemes for his future, such amazement lavished on his selfishness in wishing to retain poor Evie, who had given herself up to him for so long, that he was dinned at last into acquiescence. He gave his consent with tolerable grace, and presented his niece with the turquoise disc, which had come into his possession after the fall of Seringapatam. It was too large even for Early Victorian taste, which liked its jewellery to be of substantial size, but the daughters and daughters-in-law agreed that it was a very handsome present, and most appropriate, as Evie was going to India. Unfortunately, the first time she wished to wear it at Bombay she learned that to wear Indian ornaments in India was to incur irretrievably the stigma of being “country-born,” but the cousins did not know this. Some sort of outfit was got together for her, the cousinhood eking out an impossibly small sum of money with great goodwill and much contrivance, that she not disgrace the family; but the bride herself would have sailed for India cheerfully with what one plain-spoken “in-law” called cruelly her usual ragbag of clothes.

Had the shadow fallen even then? Eveleen asked herself the question this evening, as often before. One night—it was at a dance—she had surprised on Richard’s face, as he met her in a blaze of wax-lights, a look in which she read cold criticism, even dislike. It struck her to the heart, stripping her in one moment of her new found youth and joy. They thought she was going to faint, and it was Richard himself, all compunction and anxiety, who took her out and fussed about her with water and borrowed smelling-salts and a glass of wine; and when she sobbed out something of her sudden terror, admitted that his wound had been paining him horribly all day, and cursed himself for spoiling her evening by letting her see that he was suffering. He refused angrily to let her sit out the dances with him, and happy and satisfied, she entered the ballroom again on his arm, never dreaming of doubting his assurance. But now the doubts had crept in once more, and refused to be silenced.

If the shadow had not been there before, it had certainly made itself felt on the voyage. Eveleen was not shy—she did not know what shyness was,—and in the intervals of sea-sickness she enjoyed herself like a schoolgirl. She bobbed up and down like a cork; nothing could keep her under the weather long—such was the admiring dictum of one of the youths drawn to her by her delight in new experiences, and the unfailing gusto with which she found interest and excitement in things which other people considered deadly dull. The rest of the ladies on board eyed her askance. There was something not quite ladylike about “that Mrs Ambrose”; one did not wish to be uncharitable, but really one was almost afraid she might be called just a little bit fast. No one was more surprised both by her popularity and her unpopularity than her husband, and he resented both—or rather, the personality which was their common root. That, without any effort on her part, his wife could keep every one within sound of her voice amused and interested, gave him no pleasure—it was as though a modest violet had turned into a flaunting poppy on his hands. He had had little to do with women in his hard life, but the few ladies with whom he had come in contact did not trouble themselves to amuse the men around; they left it to the men to amuse them. Richard Ambrose had never been particularly successful in this respect, but he felt the attitude was the right one. As Eveleen told herself bitterly one day on catching sight of his disapproving face on the outskirts of the circle which her hunting stories had set in a roar, it really seemed that the only person who didn’t like Mrs Ambrose was Mrs Ambrose’s husband!

Far worse was the trouble that arose at Bombay. Eveleen had naturally taken it for granted that she would accompany her husband to the scene of his duties, but he told her curtly that Khemistan was not a place to which one could take ladies, and not knowing that Mrs Bayard was heroically attempting to defy the dangers of the climate, she accepted his dictum perforce. With Richard’s old butler to guide her inexperienced feet, she found herself established in a small hired bungalow—its ramshackle condition and shabby furniture made it feel really homelike,—mistress of what seemed to her huge sums of money, and pledged to keep accounts strictly. The result was what might have been expected. It was all very well for Ambrose to impress upon her that, apart from his political appointment, which might come to an end at any moment, he was still a poor man; her conception of poverty differed radically from his. He had inured himself to living on rice and chapatis in his comfortless bungalow—dinner at mess the one good meal of the day—that he might pay the subscriptions expected of him, and maintain a creditable appearance in public. The people of Eveleen’s world had cared nothing whatever about appearances, but had lived in a rude plenty, supported by contributions in kind from tenants whose rents were paid or not as the fancy took them—generally not. To Richard money was a regular institution, to be doled out with punctual care according to a plan carefully considered and rigidly fixed beforehand; to her it was a surprising windfall, affording delicious opportunities for the almost unknown joy of spending, and to be used accordingly. Her efforts at keeping accounts shared the fate of poor Dora Copperfield’s. The entries began by being rigorously minute, but they ceased with startling suddenness, unless the butler’s demands sent Eveleen flying to the book in horror, to put down what she could remember spending—which was very little in comparison with what she had spent. The extraordinary thing was that in these spasms of economy—which occurred periodically—she could find so dreadfully little to show for the vanished money. She might declare proudly that she had not bought a single thing for herself, and it was true, but the money was gone—how, she could not say. She was popular and hospitable, her possessions were all at the service of her friends and her friends’ servants, and her modest stable was a constant source of expense—even before she lit upon the half-starved, under-sized little Arab which she rescued from cruel treatment and named Bajazet because it sounded Eastern and imposing, and reconstructed her outbuildings to accommodate him properly. Then there was Brian, who was quartered at Poonah, and being a youth of keen affections, seized every opportunity of taking a little jaunt to Bombay to see his sister, who welcomed him on each occasion as if he were the Prodigal Son. Brian must be fed on the fat of the land—Eveleen had a wholly unjustified conviction that “sure the poor boys must be starved, without a woman to see after them,”—and his ever-recurring money troubles assuaged as far as possible. To do her justice—perhaps love made her clear-sighted, or in this one case she was able to see through Richard’s eyes—Eveleen did realise the danger of Brian’s living regularly beyond his income, and lecture him on the absolute need of pulling up. Brian listened meekly, promised to comply, accepted with almost tearful gratitude whatever his sister could scrape together to placate his most pressing creditors—and returned to duty, as often as not, to spend the money on something else.

Richard Ambrose was not left wholly ignorant of the Rake’s Progress on which his wife was embarked. Laborious epistles from the old butler betrayed anxiety lest Master’s interests should suffer, and friends coming up from Bombay brought amusing tales—amusing to them, that is—of Mrs Ambrose’s open-handedness. An opportune cholera scare enabled Ambrose to issue an edict of temporary banishment from the scene of temptation. Eveleen was to go up to Mahabuleshwar with the wife of one of her husband’s friends, to whom she was to pay a fixed sum monthly, and rusticate for awhile away from shops and entertainments. But temptation followed her even to the hills, though in a different guise. The place was the recognised summer headquarters of the Bombay Government, and the wife and daughters of the newly-arrived Commander-in-Chief were already in residence. To them came on flying visits Sir Henry Lennox himself, best loved and best hated of all the survivors of the Peninsula. Lady Lennox was what Eveleen characteristically called “aggressively motionless,” and her step-daughters were being painfully trained to follow in her decorous footsteps; but the veteran himself had a most appreciative eye for a pretty woman, and a ready enthusiasm for one who dared to ride wherever he did. Brian had wheedled a gullible commanding officer out of a week’s leave to see Eveleen comfortably settled, and the brother and sister and the scarred old soldier forgathered by some mysterious affinity, without any conventional presentation or introduction. The scandalised Military Secretary reported to the distressed Lady Lennox that it was all the fault of the Irish lady and her brother; but Lady Lennox—hearing hourly of break-neck gallops and impossible leaps—confessed in her heart of hearts that her susceptible warrior was in all probability just as much to blame. Her alarm extended merely to what Sir Harry was wont to call his “battered old carcass,” for he was too chivalrous an admirer of women in general to offer compromising attentions to one in particular. Imprudent he might be, but his imprudence confined itself to regaling Eveleen with scraps of autobiography of a startling character and moral deductions drawn from them, together with lurid denunciations of such of his many enemies as suggested themselves to his mind at the moment.

They became so friendly that Eveleen was emboldened at last to confess her anxiety about Brian, and ask the Commander-in-Chief’s advice. Brian was with his regiment again, and his last letter from Poonah had shown his sister that he was still taking his usual light-hearted way, undeterred by her exhortations. She did more than ask Sir Harry’s advice; in all innocence she did a thing of which she failed altogether to realise the heinousness. Remembering Brian’s past Staff experience, she asked the Commander-in-Chief to make him one of his aides-de-camp. Since that day she had heard such things talked of, and the recollection made her cheeks burn in her solitude to-night, but at the moment it seemed a perfectly natural thing to do. It was obvious that Brian could not or would not live within his means in the regiment, and that neither public opinion there nor the influence of his commanding officer tended to urge him to do so; therefore what could be better for him than to pass his days under the eye of the stern economist whose worn blue uniform did not put to shame even Eveleen’s ancient habit? Sir Harry seemed a little taken aback at first—unaccountably, she thought, but she realised now that he had probably never been asked for a highly desirable appointment so simply and directly before. But he respected Eveleen, and he liked the careless, good-natured young fellow about whom she was so anxious—and with good reason, as a few short sharp questions assured him. Then he gave his answer. If Brian could liquidate his debts and present himself before him as a free man three months hence, when it was possible an additional aide-de-camp might be required, he should have the post.

Probably the last thought in Sir Harry’s mind was the first that occurred to Eveleen. Brian must realise his assets, and she would supply any deficiency. If Brian had never gone into his affairs thoroughly before, he did it the next time he saw his sister, when the details of what he could sell and which of his possessions could be returned to the vendors in lieu of paying for them were remorselessly threshed out. Eveleen declared that if it turned both their hairs grey they would do it, and rewarded him at the end with the sum which was to set him free—and incidentally to bring Richard Ambrose rushing down from Khemistan as fast as the primitive Bab-us-Sahel steamer could bring him, drawn by the alarming report of his Bombay agent. It was too late to reclaim the money—save at the cost of exposing Brian to the Commander-in-Chief, which Eveleen’s tears and entreaties withheld her husband from doing,—but Brian received by letter a few home truths, which he took, until he had time to think them over, in very bad part, though Richard felt he had been criminally lenient. It was Eveleen on whom the chief punishment fell—at least, her husband regarded it as a punishment. She had to face the ordeal she had imposed upon Brian, when all the unpaid bills, the empty pages of the account book, the chits so easily signed and forgotten, were brought to light. It had never occurred to her that there was anything wrong in being in debt—she had grown up in an atmosphere of it,—and she was half alarmed and half resentful when she saw the effect of his discoveries upon Richard. But the breaking-up of the Bombay household, and her removal to Khemistan, where she would have no opportunity for extravagance, did not strike her as a punishment at all, and it made her indignant that her husband should so regard it. The one thing she feared was that he should learn the secret of Brian’s sudden elevation—which he ascribed carelessly to an idle whim on the part of a man too old for his high post,—and while that remained unknown she was happy.

“Brian’s in good hands now, at any rate, and safe,” she said to herself as she took a last look at the sea of mist, knowing nothing of a distracted letter which was already on its way to her from Poonah; “and what’s more, I’m here with Ambrose.” The two men in the dining-room were moving, but it was so late they would not expect to find her still up, and she slipped noiselessly along the verandah to her own room.

CHAPTER III.
COLONEL BAYARD’S BURDEN.

The famous city of Qadirabad, the seat of such government as Khemistan possessed, was not reached from Bab-us-Sahel without difficulty. There was a ride across the desert first, which was so much to Eveleen’s taste that she begged they might go the whole way by land. But there was no camping equipment available, and Khemistan was destitute of rest-houses, and there at the Bunder lay the steamer, booked to make the journey in four days—what more could reasonable woman desire? But Colonel Bayard had been right in saying that if the steamers plying between Bombay and Bab-us-Sahel were small and uncomfortable, those on the river were worse. Owing to her light draught, the passenger accommodation of the Asteroid was limited to a single cabin, the berths in which—so a friendly subaltern confided to Mrs Ambrose—were constructed of a wood specially selected for its hardness. Had not Colonel Bayard come to the rescue by having a tent pitched for her on deck, Eveleen must have turned every one else out, and as it was, she felt guilty of grievously restricting the space available for exercise. The salient characteristic of the scenes through which they passed—as of all else that she had yet encountered in Khemistan—was mud. Sometimes they were steaming through a country so absolutely level that there seemed no reason why the river should remain where it was instead of overflowing on either side—and derelict channels and stretches of marsh showed that the river itself was of the same mind. More often they found themselves passing between banks of mud which formed a kind of natural aqueduct, confining the river in a course high above the general level of the country, and the wash of the steamer caused portions of these banks to dissolve and slide gently into the water. Sometimes one bank was high and the other low—looking for all the world as though the river were being softly tilted sideways to allow the water to run off, and in this case the higher bank was generally wooded, with tall spindly trees above and a mass of dense undergrowth below. These woods were the famous shikargahs of the Khans—their hunting paradises, formed artificially like the New Forest, and by similar methods, as the many remains of ruined and deserted villages showed. They were strictly preserved, and such villages as still existed were at a discreet distance from them—dismal collections of mud-heaps surrounded by a network of irrigation canals. The canals were shockingly kept up, but the crops were wonderful, and Colonel Bayard pointed out to Eveleen the obvious fertility of the soil, giving so much in return for so little. He sighed as he remarked that under a civilised government the whole land might be a garden, and then changed the subject by telling her droll anecdotes of his friends the Khans.

Despite the waste of a good deal of powder and shot on various crocodiles and aquatic birds—which invariably escaped unscathed—the four days passed in such hot and confined quarters were long and wearisome, and the passengers beheld joyfully the palms and greenery which marked the approach to Qadirabad. The place was surrounded by a belt of gardens, above which, as the steamer rounded a bend of the river, rose in the distance a vast battlemented wall and great round tower, bearing an absurd resemblance to Windsor Castle. This was the Fort—or rather, fortress—palace of the Khans, dominating the city proper, but the British Agency was closer at hand, in a garden overhanging the river. It was a settlement rather than a house, for besides the large block of buildings erected by Colonel Bayard—in which the humorous detected a resemblance to a champagne-case set on end, its divisions represented by the arches of the several tiers of verandahs—some of his subordinates had built bungalows for themselves, and the native servants and hangers-on had a village of their own. There were quarters for the guards, a bazar, gardens and orchards, and the whole was surrounded by a wall some five feet high, of the usual mud-brick. Eveleen was astonished by the size of the community, for the work of the Agency required the services of a large number of resident Europeans, while there were fifty or sixty more, employed at Sahar or other places higher up the river, who made it their headquarters on occasion. Some of the local white men were married, but mostly to country-born women, so that Eveleen was unquestionably the Burree Beebee. Had her claims needed support, it would have been supplied by the chivalry of Colonel Bayard, who insisted that the Ambroses should take up their quarters in his own house, and consider him as their guest while he was there. For the next few months, he said, he would be little in Qadirabad, as duty called him up the river, to look after the supply arrangements for the British forces returning—or more literally retreating—from Ethiopia, and he was sure his wife would like to think the rooms he had prepared for her were in the occupation of his friends. As Richard Ambrose acted as Resident in his chief’s absence, the arrangement seemed natural, but Eveleen had qualms when she saw the elaborate and expensive furniture—not lest she should spoil it, but lest Mrs Bayard should think it had not been treated with proper respect. One trial was spared her. Almost with tears in his eyes, her husband implored Colonel Bayard not to impose upon her the task of housekeeping on so large a scale, and she was saved from the certainty of disgracing herself by reducing the Resident to bankruptcy. It is true that she considered the arrangements of the responsible secretary to be at least as lavish as her own had been, but at any rate he was in the habit of keeping accounts.

It had not occurred to her that in the absence of all household duties time might hang a little heavy on her hands. There were plenty of people to ride with her morning and evening, but in office hours she was the only idle person in a hive of industry. That, at least, was her husband’s view, of which she was irreverently scornful. The native clerks might be hard worked, but she declined to believe it of the Europeans, who did nothing, so she declared, but sit and smoke, and now and then sign their names to the documents that were put before them. How much better for them to spend the pleasant hours of mid-morning and late afternoon—which would so soon become too hot for outdoor exercise—in healthful cross-country gallops! But the Indian official day was far too firmly established to be overthrown by one mutinous Irishwoman, and Eveleen had to make her own occupations. She was training the little horse Bajazet—to the mingled amazement and scandal of her neighbours, who pointed out unsparingly defects of form and action which betrayed his mixed blood. He had a horror of natives—probably due to ill-treatment in his youth—and his mistress went through stormy scenes with half a dozen syces, dismissing one after another before she found one who would do as he was told. This was a meek patriarch who was content to sit by, shrouded in the horse-blanket, while Bajazet was put through his paces and learned to follow Eveleen about like a dog. Once he came up the verandah steps after her, but he was ruthlessly ejected by the orders of her husband, who vowed he would not have the place turned into an Irish cabin, and she was obliged to content herself thereafter with teaching him to ask for dainties without coming in search of them.

The unwritten law which restricted her unescorted rides within the limits of the Agency was naturally a challenge to the Irish mind, and Eveleen never rested until it was abrogated in her favour. It was not as if she wanted to go into the town, she said—who would? And indeed, Qadirabad—for all its imposing appearance and historic renown—was a sadly uninteresting place. Very soon after her arrival, Eveleen was taken up to the Fort gate, to look thence down the long line of the Grand Bazar, and obtain a general view of the city. A wilderness of mud hovels, broken in places by the dome of a mosque or the blunted pyramidal tower of a Hindu temple, with a two-storied house within high walls here and there, but never a tree to relieve the monotony until the eye hailed the grateful greenery of the encircling gardens on the horizon—all was squalid, mean, miserable. The Bazars—famous throughout Asia for their manufactures—seemed to have fallen upon evil days, for such pottery and lacquered ware as was to be seen was of the poorest, and the gold and silver work and precious stuffs of old were hardly to be found nowadays. A reason might be discovered for this in the bands of armed men constantly to be seen in the narrow streets, eyeing the peaceable craftsmen as inferior beings permitted to exist in order to minister to the needs of their superiors, but by no means to lay up wealth for themselves. The Khans were not Khemis by race. A century ago they had come from Arabitistan, across the mountains to the north-west, swooping down resistlessly upon a people “quiet and secure” and practically defenceless. They had parcelled out the country among their rude retainers, who remained as feudal chiefs, and Khans and Sardars alike drew upon the inexhaustible reservoir of Arabitistan for warriors of their own race to maintain and extend their dominion. Without this continual reinforcement, the soft life of the plains and inter-marriage with the conquered people might have enfeebled the ruling caste, but with fresh hordes of wild Arabit horsemen to be summoned at need, they remained a power to be respected—if not particularly respectable. With tulwar and shield and lance, the wild men swaggered where they would, responsible only to the Khans—and not always very amenable to them—and caring nothing for anybody else. Eveleen admired their showy little active horses, the ease and grace of the riders, and the bright silks and embroidered shawls of their apparel, but she had sense enough to realise that they were not people it would be desirable to meet if she were riding alone.

But if the town was barred, the garden-belt outside it was surely a very different thing. The Arabit horsemen were seldom to be found in the neighbourhood of the Agency—unless one of the Khans should happen to be paying a state visit to Colonel Bayard—and the country was fairly open. What danger could there be for Eveleen if she did not go too far away, respected shikargahs, and avoided growing crops? Yes, she would take a mounted orderly—it would only be like a groom—but not—oh, please not!—an escort of the irregular force known as the Khemistan Horse, which had been enrolled as the Resident’s guard. How could she ride at her ease if she had always to tag about with an army behind her? Playing the part of the Importunate Widow, she succeeded at last in imposing her will on Colonel Bayard, and that unfortunate man, most unfairly cast for the part of the Unjust Judge, found that he had carefully cultivated a thorn for his own side.

He was in his office one day, discussing weightily with Richard Ambrose the various matters of importance which might arise during his absence, when sounds of dispute outside interrupted their deliberations. Some one was demanding to be allowed to enter, and was being respectfully but firmly repulsed by the scandalised attendants—and the voice left no doubt who the intruder was.

“Mrs Ambrose, as I live!” exclaimed Mrs Ambrose’s husband in unflattering disgust. “What bee has she got in her bonnet now? Excuse me one moment.”

“Mrs Ambrose appears to wish to see me,” said Colonel Bayard, with his unfailing kindness. “We can’t let an English lady be turned away by the chobdars. Come! Good morning, ma’am; is there something you want me to do for you? Good heavens! what has happened? Has any one dared——?” for Eveleen’s face was flushed and tearful, and her lips trembled too much to speak. She wrung her hands together wildly.

“Murder—a woman!” it was a kind of hoarse scream.

“You have been attacked? No?” as his eye ran quickly over her speckless habit. “What is it, then? Sit down and tell us about it.” He led her to a chair, and waved the attendants away. “You have had a shock? A glass of wine!” he signed to a waiting servant. “Now let us hear what it is.”

“Compose yourself, for Heaven’s sake!” growled Richard Ambrose—not encouragingly, but the harsh tone proved more effectual than the Resident’s kindness in enabling Eveleen to pull herself together. With her fingers tightly pressed against one another she sat upright and spoke jerkily.

“’Twas a poor woman—just a bit of a girl. Her father and her husband had quarrelled. The horrid wretch—the husband, I mean—went straight home—and called her out. The creature came—and stood before him trembling. He took hold of her hair—her beautiful long hair—and twisted it—into a rope—and strangled her with it—her own hair——” Her voice rose into a scream again.

“Yes, yes—very distressing,” Colonel Bayard patted her hand kindly. “These things will happen here, we know, but you are new to them. And you were passing, and saw it done?”

“Saw it?” she cried furiously. “D’ye think I would not have broke my whip over the brute’s head, and poked his eyes out with the bits after? No, I was passing, and heard the old women keening—her mother and her mother-in-law—and I went in there and saw—her poor face—and her hair—— And I made the syce ask them about it, and they told me, and I came straight back to you at once, that you might get the wretch found out and punished!”

“But, my dear lady, where do you think he is?”

“Why, in hiding, of course!” in surprise.

“Not a bit of it! A man don’t go into hiding in Khemistan for little accidents like that. I dare be bound the fellow is now boasting to his friends of the revenge he has taken on his father-in-law, and every one of ’em is sympathising with him. That’s all.”

“But d’ye mean nothing will be done?”

“Nothing whatever.”

“You mean you will do nothing?”

“My dear Mrs Ambrose, what could I do? Killing is no murder here, where a woman is concerned.”

“But it ought to be. You could go to the chief Khan——”

“He would merely laugh at me. ‘Murder, you say, sahib? Who was killed? A woman? and the man’s wife? and he was angry with her father? Why, of course he killed her. It was the natural thing to do.’ And that’s precisely what it is—in Khemistan.”

“And you let them go on like this? You say nothing——”

“What could I say? And what good would it do? It ain’t as though the poor creature were alive, and I could save her by intervening. It’s too late—unfortunately.”

He added the last word in deference to the stormy look in Eveleen’s eyes as she rose from her chair, knocking down the untasted glass of wine at her elbow.

“You needn’t say any more. I see how it is—perfectly. If Ambrose killed me, ’twould merely be, ‘Only a woman—only his wife—and he was angry with her—and it served her right!’” defiantly.

“If Ambrose killed you, I would hang him with my own hands, and you know it very well!” said Colonel Bayard, between jest and earnest. Then his tone changed. “But you have no right even to associate such a thought with your husband, Mrs Ambrose. It is abominably unfair to him, and only to be excused because you are a little unstrung at this moment.”

“Just look at his face, then!” cried Eveleen recklessly. “Is there black murder in it, or is there not, I ask you?” and she departed—leaving two discomfited men behind her—to cry her eyes out in her own room, until her husband, really alarmed, insisted on a visit from the doctor, and—so near is bathos to tragedy!—the administration of a composing draught.

That incident was closed. Eveleen made numberless irrevocable resolutions that never, no, never! in any circumstances whatever would she attempt to appeal again to the compassion, or even the sense of justice, of those two stony-hearted men—but evidently she was one of the people to whom things are bound to happen. Colonel Bayard had gone to pay his farewell visit to the Khans, attended by Richard Ambrose and other subordinates, and preceded by chobdars bearing silver sticks and similar insignia of dignity, when the remaining occupants of the Residency became aware that Mrs Ambrose had another row on hand. They guessed it when she returned from her ride at a tearing gallop—the syce left behind somewhere on the horizon—and dashed up to the office verandah, demanding eagerly to see the Resident Sahib. It was clear she had forgotten all about his absence, for those who were peering at her through the tatties reported that she made a gesture of despair, and mounting again, rode round to her own quarters with a slow hopelessness very different from the ardour with which she had ridden in. She sent her horse away, but stayed walking up and down the verandah without going to change her habit, her sun hat thrown aside. The two men whose rooms were on the opposite side of the courtyard could see the white figure passing and repassing across the dark space left by the updrawn blind. Sometimes she came to the steps to call a servant, and sent him on some errand—evidently to see whether the Resident had returned without her hearing him, but in vain.

“If that woman tramps up and down much more, she’ll drive me distracted. What’s the matter with her?” demanded one of the watchers irritably at last.

“Couldn’t say,” was the laconic reply of his companion.

“Well, you might risk a guess, anyhow. Tell you what, I’m going to see. Are you game to come too?”

The other reflected. “I suppose Ambrose ain’t likely to consider it an intrusion?”

Captain Crosse characterised Scottish caution in unsuitable language. “I always knew Ambrose would make trouble by bringing his wife up here, but since he has brought her, one can’t in common humanity leave the unfortunate creature to walk her feet off for want of some one to help her. I’m going, and you have got to come too. Here goes!”

They went across to the Ambroses’ verandah, and Eveleen turned a despairing face upon them at the sound of Captain Crosse’s hesitating greeting, “Can we do anything, Mrs Ambrose? We were afraid something must be wrong.”

“Sure I don’t know what to do!” she burst forth. “I’m in the most frightful trouble. Do come in, the two of you, and tell me is there anything you can do. But I don’t believe anybody but the Resident will be any good, and it seems as if he’d never be back!”

“Sit down and tell us about it, ma’am,” urged Captain Crosse, while the young Scotchman pulled a chair forward. “To fret yourself into a fever will do nobody any good, and be precious uncomfortable for you.”

Eveleen hesitated, pushed back the damp hair from her temples, and dropped into the chair. “It’s because there’s no time,” she said despairingly. “Colonel Bayard said it was too late before, because the poor creature was dead, but this time she could be saved, only there’s no one to do it—— I suppose,” with reviving energy, “you wouldn’t come with me and rescue her?”

A glance had passed between the two men over her head, and now, as she sat up eagerly and grasped the arms of the chair preparatory to rising, Lieutenant Haigh said, with discouraging slowness, “But who is it you want to rescue, Mrs Ambrose—and what from?”

“The poor girl—child, rather. They carried her off—I saw the dust of their horses in the distance——”

“But who carried her off?” patiently.

“Sure how would I know? A band of Arabit horsemen—they brought a palki, and forced her in——”

“But who was she? and where did they take her? Try and tell us exactly what has happened.”

Eveleen glanced upwards, as though in search of patience, and still holding the chair, as if to anchor herself to it, spoke with exaggerated deliberation. “She was a pretty little young girl—I have often seen her; she would peep out in a shy sort of way and smile at me. To-day she was not there, but the old father—he’s a poor sort of fellow, that—was crying fit to break his heart and throwing dust in the air, and the mother—that’s worth two of him—was all bleeding where the wretches had knocked her about when she tried to hold her daughter back, and the neighbours would all be sympathising with them—but they ran away like mice, every one of them, when they saw me.”

“But who had carried her off, and whither?” repeated Sir Dugald Haigh. He was a poverty-stricken soldier burdened with an inherited baronetcy.

“Sure I told you”—with some irritation. “A band of Arabit horsemen, and they would be taking her to the Fort. The parents were inconsolable—they said she was to have been married next week.”

“They would be—they’ll have to return the gifts,” said Sir Dugald drily. Then his tone changed. “Well, ma’am, that puts an end to the business. When a girl—or a woman either, for it would have made no difference if the marriage was a week ago instead of a week hence—is taken to the Fort, there she stays.”

Eveleen gazed at him, horror-stricken. “Any girl—and against her will—and no one minds?”

“That’s the way here,” curtly.

“You see, Mrs Ambrose”—Captain Crosse took up the parable—“it ain’t the same with these people as it is with us. The Arabits take a girl when they want her just as they take anything that pleases ’em from a shop in the Bazar. These women don’t mind that sort of thing—rather like it, in fact—think it a bit of an honour, as you might say.”

“If you had seen that poor old father and mother, you would never believe that!” indignantly.

“That’s just for to-day. It’ll be all right when they have got over it a bit. A ruler always exercises this power in the East—why, just as it was in the Bible, you know.” He spoke with increased confidence, feeling that the thing had been set on a proper footing. “I assure you there are thousands of these women in the Fort—place is swarming with ’em. So you see, it’s quite the right thing here.”

“But how can it be right just because it’s always done? And I am sure it’s not done in India.”

“Not in our districts, of course; but believe me, in some of the native states within our borders, not only would the girl have been taken, but the parents would have been killed for offering resistance, and the house set on fire—for a warning to others, you see.”

“I don’t see that makes it any better—horrid though it be. What is Colonel Bayard here for if it ain’t to stop things of this sort from happening?”

“’Pon my word, ma’am——!” began Captain Crosse, quite taken aback, but Lieutenant Haigh spoke slowly.

“You are making a mistake, ma’am. The Resident is here to seek to persuade the Khans to keep their treaties with us, so that we may be able to leave them in the enjoyment of their authority.”

“Authority to murder women and carry off girls? And he calls himself an Englishman and a Christian!”

This was high treason, but though Captain Crosse showed signs of flight, Sir Dugald argued patiently on. “You must know yourself, Mrs Ambrose, that there’s no better-hearted person in the world than the Resident. But he has enough to do with his proper business, and the Khans have no mind to make it easy for him. They choose to go on destroying villages to extend their shikargahs, and plundering traders, and intercepting the river traffic by demanding tolls, and they do it, never caring a pin about the difficulties they are making for him.”

“Then he ought just wash his hands of them!” declared Eveleen defiantly. “If I were in his place——”

“My dear Mrs Ambrose, what is the matter?” Colonel Bayard and Richard came up the verandah steps, to find her confronting the two men. She looked at him stormily.

“It’s a fool I am to expect anything——!” she began, and stopped, unable to speak.

“Mrs Ambrose was unfortunately a witness—or nearly so—of the carrying-off of a girl to the Fort, sir,” said Sir Dugald; “and the lamentations of the parents have affected her sadly.”

“Positively, my dear Richard,” said Colonel Bayard, “you must not allow Mrs Ambrose to distress herself in this way. She will make herself ill, and our little society here will lack its brightest ornament.”

Eveleen looked at him with absolute abhorrence. “And that’s all you have to say about it?” she demanded.

“My dear lady, what can I say? The custom of the country permits the rulers to recruit their zenanas in this way, and how is a stranger to prevent it?”

“Go to the Khans and get her back! Tell me now, what’s the use of their calling you their father and their mother if they’ll not do what you tell them?”

“I fear their confidence stops short on the threshold of the zenana,” said Colonel Bayard gravely. “But suppose, to gratify me, they consented to the release of this girl—do you think she would choose to be released? Nay, she would hug her chains, as you consider them, and entreat to remain in the Fort.”

“The worse for her, then, the wretched creature! But sure you’d have brought the Khans to book, and shown them the law was stronger than they are.”

“What law? They would have been constrained by friendship, nothing more. The English law don’t run here. The will of the ruler is the law—at least, it comes to that.”

“And Colonel Bayard can reconcile it with his conscience to use all his endeavours to prop up a system under which such things can happen!” she cried. Her husband glanced round aghast to see the effect of this blasphemy, but the other two men had discreetly faded away, Colonel Bayard looked at her sadly.

“What can I say? I do my best for these people, but they will do nothing to help me—to justify me. Yet to use force—to compel them to virtue—would be an outrage, an iniquity. Ain’t it better for them to govern themselves, even badly, than to be governed, however well, by us?”

“Ah!” cried Eveleen suddenly, “that’s it, that’s it! You think of them and of us—and not for one moment of the creatures they misgovern, the women and the poor.”

“As Heaven is my witness, I do think of them—and constantly,” he replied, with deep solemnity. “It is my earnest hope to ameliorate their condition by influencing the Khans—in time. But never will I be a party to seizing more territory under the pretext of seeing justice done.”

“In time!” echoed Eveleen scornfully, but her husband interposed with crushing effect.

“That will do, my dear. The Resident will think you are an advocate of Women’s Rights, if you don’t take care. You will find it advisable to rest a little after all this excitement, and it would not be amiss to change your gown.”

When Richard spoke in that tone, he could have shifted an iceberg, so Eveleen was wont to complain, with some confusion of thought. On the present occasion, he certainly shifted her. She found herself sitting on the couch in her bedroom, all the fight gone out of her, while he stood before her, his face wearing what she called its hatefullest expression.

“Now look here, my dear,” he said coldly, “there has been enough of these heroics. Twice over you have badgered Bayard in a way that would have made any other man on earth jawab [dismiss] me on the spot, and it is not to happen again. Why he don’t forbid you to set foot outside the compound I don’t know.”

Defiance revived. “I do,” said Eveleen. “Because he knows ’twould be no good.”

“Believe me, you would not find it easy to pass the gates in the teeth of the guard.”

“As if I’d dream of trying it! I’d jump the wall, of course.”

He recognised the futility of argument. “At any rate, if he chooses to leave you full liberty, I am going to restrict it. You won’t be able to ride much longer in office hours, happily—the sun is getting too hot—but as long as you do, you will be good enough to avoid the villages. If you can’t ride past these people without interfering in their concerns, why—take another direction, if you please.”

“I don’t mind,” listlessly. “Sure it’s no pleasure to me to see such shocking things happening, and nobody with the heart to lift a finger to prevent them!”

“Do you mean to say that after what Bayard told you, you still expect——”

“Expect? I don’t expect anything of him at all. But will you tell me that if Sir Harry Lennox was here, there would nothing be done?”

“That old ruffian? Oh, I dare say he’d be capable——”

“You may call him all the names you like, but I tell you he would have hanged that murderer the other day, if it had been a Khan upon his throne. And to-day he’d have ridden up to the Fort and broken the gates down, and let all the women out.”

“And a nice thing that would be! Try to borrow a little common-sense, my dear, even if you don’t possess any. The Fort is full of women, and you talk calmly of turning ’em all out of doors—penniless, homeless, accustomed to a luxurious existence! Take my word for it, they wouldn’t thank you! A few might be silly enough to accept the offer of freedom, but they would precious soon come begging to be let in again. They have everything women can want—at any rate, these women—good food, fine clothes——”

“Food and clothes!” scornfully. “Why, I have food and clothes!”

“And ain’t you happy, pray?”

“I am the most miserable woman alive!” with tremendous emphasis and absolute—if transitory—conviction. For once Richard Ambrose was staggered. Astonishment, remorse, resentment, incredulity—she read them all in his face for one moment. Then he recovered himself.

“Pooh, pooh, my dear! you exaggerate,” he said sharply.

CHAPTER IV.
A LUCKLESS DAY.

Morning brought—if not counsel—a considerable measure of cheerfulness to Eveleen. To her buoyant temperament protracted gloom was impossible, and her husband smiled to remember his momentary alarm. In her full enjoyment of the happiness she had for ever disclaimed, she was as shallow as any of the native women whose cause she had championed. Unfortunately he could not know what was the root of her pleasurable excitement this morning. His command to avoid the villages had reminded her of a plan for continuing Bajazet’s education that had occurred to her when riding with Sir Dugald Haigh one evening—but had been carefully concealed from that prudent young man. So far she had never ridden what she delighted to call “my Arab” when in company with others. She meant the accomplishments of her little steed to burst proudly on the men who had laughed at him and slandered his ancestry. Colonel Bayard had had some jumps put up for her in the compound, and encouraged her in many unsuccessful attempts to take Bajazet over them with the assurance that your true Arab was never a good jumper. Much practice had at length enabled her to get him over them after a fashion, and now she wished to try him over water. The Resident himself was her companion on the early morning ride—a parting compliment, since he was leaving by the up-river steamer later in the day; and as he was a sound, rather than an adventurous horseman, she found it decidedly dull, its decorum redeemed only by the romantic wildness of the escort of Khemistan Horse. Her time came when he and Richard were safely at work in the office, and she could start out again on Bajazet, attended by the meek syce and an orderly of satisfactorily brigandish appearance called Shab-ud-din. They rode out beyond the belt of gardens surrounding the city, so far that Shab-ud-din began to be anxious, and tried to warn her of something. He knew no English, the syce very little, and Eveleen about as little Persian, but their efforts towards mutual comprehension were assisted by the sound and vibration of heavy guns not far off, and she understood that the Khans’ artillery was practising somewhere in this direction. Her attendants were satisfied when she turned aside towards the river again, though they did not seem quite happy when she reached her goal. The country out here was a kind of chessboard, cut up in all directions by irrigation canals, and she had marked one which seemed exactly suited to her purpose. Deep and wide where it left the river, it parted with so much water to smaller canals on either side that at the point she had chosen it was a mere trickle between quite manageable banks. Bajazet did not appear to like it at first—perhaps to his desert-descended mind water was something to be respected rather than leapt over—but after she had dismounted and led him across once or twice, he began to enter into the idea, and his mistress flattered him with the assurance that he was a great little horse indeed.

There was only one drawback to her satisfaction, and that was Shab-ud-din’s inability to comprehend that he need not follow her backwards and forwards across the canal. He was very loyal and very dense, and evidently felt that wherever the Beebee went it was his duty to go too. His youth had not been spent in the hunting-field, and his horse was much heavier than Bajazet, so that when Eveleen increased the length of the jumps by moving farther down the canal, the results became rather alarming. Two or three falls in the soft sandy mud happily inflicted no serious injury, but the banks suffered a good deal, and so did the channel.

Engrossed in her sport, Eveleen did not realise how time was passing until the increasing heat of the sun began to make itself unpleasantly evident. It really would soon be too hot to go out in the daytime, she said to herself regretfully, finding the prospect of the long ride back to the Residency the reverse of attractive. She must be getting near a village, too—at least, there were people running across the fields; so droll for them to be coming out to work at this time of day! Well, just one more jump, to take her to the right side of the canal for home, and this would be really a good wide one. Turning to Shab-ud-din, she did her best, by word and gesture, to explain to him that he had better ride a little higher up, and not attempt to cross here, but as she rode towards the bank she heard him pounding after her. It was his own fault, the foolish fellow! she could not pull up now, but she hoped he would fall soft—the fragmentary thoughts passed through her mind as Bajazet rose to the leap. But this time he was not to sail lightly over the obstacle—“like a bird,” as she delighted to say,—for a man who must have been crouching unseen in the water-channel started up, waving his arms and shouting. Had Eveleen not been taken by surprise the good little horse might have cleared the interrupter, but involuntarily she deflected him ever so slightly from his course. He faltered, jumped short, and as he staggered among the stiff clods of the opposite bank Shab-ud-din and his big horse came thundering down upon the two. Shab-ud-din would probably have come off in any case, but in his horror at the scene in front of him he must have tried to pull up, and forthwith executed a complicated somersault sideways which left him groaning in the mud.

With an instinct born of long experience, Eveleen had freed her foot from the stirrup when she saw disaster imminent, but it was not necessary for her to roll from the saddle, nor was she thrown from it. What happened—to her exceeding wrath—was that the man whose interference had caused all the trouble seized the skirt of her long habit and deliberately dragged her to the ground while Bajazet was struggling for a foothold. The shock pulled the reins from her hands, and she saw her steed, freed from her weight, reach the top of the bank safely and dash off in one direction, while Shab-ud-din’s, struggling up with an energy which sent the clods flying every way at once, laboured heavily up the side and disappeared in the other. The syce was nowhere to be seen, and Eveleen found herself sitting in the damp mud of the channel, helplessly entangled in her habit, with Shab-ud-din lying motionless close at hand in an attitude that spoke to her experienced eye of broken bones, and an angry crowd, who seemed to have arrived on the scene by magic, yelling and dancing with rage all about her. She was absolutely defenceless, for she had even lost her whip in the fall, and every word of Persian she had ever known was gone completely out of her head—even if these Khemi cultivators could have understood it. The only thing she could do was to adjust her hat—which was half-way down her back—for the sun was blazing down upon her, and then to look as much as possible as if she was not in the least frightened, which was wholly untrue. If she could even have risen to her feet, she felt that she might have overawed the mob, but what could she do when it was impossible to free herself and stand up without assistance? The men were all armed—some with rusty but murderous-looking swords, all with heavy iron-shod sticks—and to judge by their attitude, they had every intention of using them on her. She found herself speculating which of them would strike the first blow—the signal for all the rest to fall on her—and decided in favour of a truculent person who was prancing about and swinging a huge tulwar in most unpleasant proximity to her head. Would Richard be sorry? the question presented itself irresistibly, and brought its own answer—— Undoubtedly, but it would be because his wife hadn’t had the sense to die decently in her bed!

It would not have been Eveleen not to laugh at the picture thus called up, and the sight of her amusement gave pause to her assailants. They did not shout quite so loud, and the tulwar came down a little farther off instead of actually upon her. In this moment of comparative relief she saw the stranger. He was riding along the bank towards them—as fast as the insecure footing would allow, dashing the clods this way and that—and he was leading Bajazet. He was richly dressed, with a gorgeous pagri striped with gold, but his complexion was not dark—rather the brick-red of a European burnt by tropical suns. He shouted angrily as he came near, and the mob gave one glance of terror and dissolved helter-skelter. He turned and shouted to some one out of sight, and the rush of horses’ feet and clank of accoutrements seemed to show that he was attended by a military escort, which he was directing to pursue the fugitives. He dismounted as he came near—Eveleen’s syce appeared out of space to take the horses’ bridles—and stumbled down the rough bank towards her.

“I trust you ain’t hurt, ma’am? Bless my soul, if it ain’t Miss Evie—Miss Delany, I should say!”

The voice, with its Cockney accent, brought back vague memories of misty mornings, of purpling copses and vivid turf, of battered stone walls and untrimmed hedges masking sunken lanes—all the accompaniments of a day’s hunting in the old life. But why not an Irish voice? With a sudden effort Eveleen found the clue—recalled a young man, not a gentleman, who had come into the neighbourhood on some legal business, and having been bitten by the prevailing mania, had afforded a rich feast of amusement to the members of the hunt.

“It’s not you, Mr Carthew?” she said incredulously.

“’Sh, miss! They call me Tamas Sahib here, and it’s safer. To think of comin’ across you!”

“And they call me Mrs Ambrose,” she laughed, as he helped her up. “But why would you be going about dressed up like this?”

“I ain’t one of your lot,” he avoided her eye. “Master-General of Ordnance to their Highnesses—that’s what I am. The Resident he don’t know nothin’ about me, and I’ll thank you, ma’am, not to tell him nothin’.”

“As you please,” she said, rather perplexed. “But you’ll not mind my telling Major Ambrose—in confidence——” as she surprised a look of something like alarm. “Sure you must see he’ll wish to thank you for coming to my help,” with a touch of hauteur. What was the man so mysterious about?

“As you please, ma’am. But you’ll remember I ain’t an Englishman here—just one of these people.” He had wrung most of the water out of her skirt by this time, and brushed off some of the mud—clumsily, but with evident goodwill. “You did better for me once,” as he looked disparagingly at his handiwork.

“The time I cot your horse for you when you were in the boghole? Ah no, nonsense! I didn’t even try to brush the mud off you, because you were all mud, every bit of you, were you not? But would you look at us, talking over old times like this, and leaving poor Shab-ud-din to lie and groan!”

“Let me see to him, ma’am. It’s no job for you.”

“That it is, when he came by his fall trying to help me. What d’ye think now? his collar-bone. I’d say it was, and maybe an arm as well—and how in the wide world will we get him home?”

“If you’ll be good enough to leave it to me, ma’am—believe me, you must. It’s for my own sake——” shamefacedly. “It won’t do for my men to catch me talking privately with you. If you’ll mount and follow me, they shall bring the poor chap in.”

“Follow you?” her eyebrows went up slightly.

“If you don’t mind, ma’am. That’s the way here, you know, and as I was saying, I’m one of ’em now.”

With what she felt was exemplary meekness, Eveleen allowed the syce to mount her, and waited while her old acquaintance rode to meet the wild horsemen who formed his escort. They were returning in triumph, bringing with them several of the fugitive assailants, who bore every appearance of having been roughly handled. It occurred to her suddenly that to deliver over Khemi villagers to a band of Arabits was probably equivalent to sentencing them to death, and she called after Carthew—

“What was it made the villagers so angry? What were they after?”

“You were breakin’ down their canal, and they thought you meant destroyin’ it, ma’am. I’ll teach ’em to make a fuss about what their betters do in future.”

“Now, now, ’twas my fault,” said Eveleen. “They have got a good beating, by the look of them, so let them go, and please give them ten rupees from me, to pay for the damage.”

“It’s encouragin’ ’em to do it again——” he began.

“They won’t get the chance, or I’m much mistaken—knowing Major Ambrose as I do,” with a sigh. “No, ’twas just to show them I wasn’t meaning to do any harm.” She watched Carthew as he met his followers, had the prisoners ranged in front of him and harangued them impressively, then received money from an attendant who produced it from some mysterious hiding-place in his girdle, and distributed it among them. It made her smile to see that he shepherded his troopers carefully back, evidently suspecting that otherwise they might follow the pardoned criminals and force them to disgorge. Leaving two men to look after Shab-ud-din, he led the way again towards Qadirabad, Eveleen following him, with the syce at her stirrup, and the escort bringing up the rear. The sun was very hot by this time, Bajazet was tired and stumbled more than once, and Eveleen drooped in her saddle, trying to nerve herself in advance for the ordeal of meeting a justly incensed Richard. She met him sooner than she expected, in a cloud of dust, with an escort of Khemistan Horse. Carthew drew aside, with an admirable air of contempt alike for the service he had rendered and for its object. Richard was angry.

“What have you been doing with yourself now?” he demanded of his muddy and dishevelled wife.

“I got a fall, and this—this gentleman—something in the Khans’ Artillery he is—helped me up.”

“Sardar Sahib”—Richard rode a little nearer the disdainful figure of the rescuer—“I am deeply indebted to you. Accept my acknowledgments.”

“It is nothing, sahib. I happened by chance upon the spot.”

“Don’t let him go!” Eveleen whispered anxiously. “There were some villagers—I spoiled their canal or something—he paid ten rupees for me—we must give it him back.”

“I don’t carry piles of coin about with me, my dear, but I imagine he will trust me. Or have you already given him your whip in pledge?”

Horror-stricken, Eveleen realised that she had not recovered her gold-mounted whip—the gift of the hunt on her marriage. “It’s gone—lost!” she said despairingly. “I must go back—or another day, perhaps—and look for it.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort. I understand, Sardar Sahib, there’s a small matter of money between us. It shall be sent to your quarters in an hour without fail. But I am still infinitely your debtor.”

“The obligation is on my side, sahib. May you be fortunate!” and with due interchange of compliments the two parties separated.

“This is the last time you’ll ride out without an escort, my dear!” said Richard pleasantly. “It’s clear you ain’t able to take care of yourself. That’s the Yankee chap who commands the Khans’ Artillery, I presume? How did he contrive to be on the spot so pat?”

“How would I know?” listlessly. “But it’s English he is—not American. I know him.”

“You have the most extraordinary set of acquaintances of any female I have ever met! He gives himself out as American—that’s all I know. Where have you seen him before?”

“He used to follow the hounds one season, a few years ago. ’Twas just when Pickwick was coming out, and everybody called him Mr Winkle, for he’d turn up on the most hopeless crocks you ever saw, and as often on the ground as in the saddle. Some sort of attorney’s clerk he was—hunting up evidence or something, but it wasn’t much he got, unless he found it in the mud.”

“His riding has improved since then, evidently—or he rides better horses,” drily. “What became of him?”

“My dear Ambrose, how would I know? I did hear a rumour that he had got into some trouble and enlisted, but ’twas likely nothing but scandal.”

“And then got into some more trouble and deserted—eh?”

“Sure y’are very ready to belittle the poor fellow!” Eveleen turned upon her husband. “I suppose that’s the measure of the value you set upon your wife—the way you treat the man who’s just saved her life?”

“You had not told me the extent of the obligation, my dear. But the greater it is, the more careful you had better be to maintain the distance he has fixed between himself and us. The fellow is undoubtedly a deserter from our artillery—whether from the Bengal side or this I don’t know; the native princes are always ready to entertain ’em to instruct their troops. I have told you he passes himself off as a Yankee—that’s to prevent our making enquiries, of course, and perhaps also to evade the suspicions of his present employers. They would smell a rat at once did he show any desire for intercourse with the Agency. There’s no manner of doubt he’s a deserter.”

“Ambrose, you wouldn’t contemplate laying information against him?” anxiously.

“What do you take me for, my dear? No doubt it’s my duty, but as you have reminded me, the fellow has placed me under a profound obligation. If you’ll remember the fact yourself, and be content to pass him without acknowledgment should you meet, so much the better for him.”

Eveleen did not agree with this at all. The tone in which Richard spoke of the “profound obligation” was disagreeable, and the thought of cutting her rescuer dead was more so. But she was too much subdued and dispirited to embark on further wordy warfare just now, though she made her own resolutions privately. Richard, observing her unwonted meekness, drew flattering deductions from it, and improved the occasion by intimating that she would do well to relieve the Resident’s mind by promising to confine her rides within orthodox limits in future. But this was too much to ask, and when Colonel Bayard came out anxiously to meet the rescue expedition and enquire how it had sped, his solicitude did not meet with the gratitude it deserved, since he incautiously expressed the same hope. What was to happen if she felt she must go out for a gallop when she was bound by a promise not to? Eveleen demanded indignantly; and thus faced by the old problem of the immovable object and the irresistible force, Colonel Bayard wisely confined himself to laying it down, in the hearing of his staff, that in no case was she to leave the compound in future without either an escort or European attendance. This was galling, and she sought her own rooms in much depression of spirit. But the misfortunes of this unfortunate day were not yet at an end. Richard, who had accompanied her in a considerate silence which she would certainly not have maintained had their cases been reversed, suddenly found his tongue.

“There was a letter for you in the dâk—here it is. That brother of yours is honouring you, I presume. Why don’t the fellow learn to write? Such a fist I never saw—nor anybody else neither. Here this letter has been up to Sahar and down to Bab-us-Sahel again—and all his fault.”

“The Delanys think more of fighting than of writing,” said Eveleen succinctly. It sounded so neat that she felt quite cheered.

“No doubt. I’ll wager anything the fellow wants more money, or he wouldn’t have written now. If he does, you had better leave it to me to answer him.”

“I’ll not do anything of the sort. He don’t want money, I’m certain, and if he did, he wouldn’t take yours.”

“H’m!” said Richard Ambrose infuriatingly.

The Flag of the Adventurer

TheFlag of the Adventurer

CONTENTS.