d straight--taller than
Nevil--smiling down at her. "I wasn't exactly hiding. I was shirking--a
little bit. But now you've found me, you won't escape!"

Pressing down the edge of the hammock, he half lifted her into it and
settled her among the cushions, deftly tucking in her silks and muslins.

"Comfy?" he asked, surveying her, with Nevil's own smile in his eyes.

"Comfy," she sighed, wishing discreet warnings at the bottom of the sea.
Just to be foolish with him--the bliss of it! To chime in with his
moods, his enthusiasms, his nonsense--she asked nothing better of life,
when he came home. "Very clever, Sonling. But no,"--she lifted a
finger--"that won't do. You are twenty-one. Too big for the small name
now. So far away up there!"

"If I shot up as high as a lamp-post, my heart would still be down
there--at your feet."

He said it lightly--that was the Englishman. But he said it--that was
the Rajput. And she knew not which she loved the best. Strange to love
two such opposites with equal fervour.

She blew him a kiss from her finger-tips. "Very well. We will not be
unkind to the small name and throw him on the rubbish-heap. But now sit,
please--Sonling. You have been talking--you and Dad? Not any decision?
Is he not wishing you should--work for India?"

"Mummy, I don't know." He secured a chair and sat down facing her. "He
insists that I'm officially free to kick over the traces, that he's not
the kind of father who 'thunders vetos from the family hearthrug!'"

Lilamani smiled very tenderly at that so characteristic touch; but she
said nothing. And Roy went on: "All the same, I gathered that he's
distinctly not keen on my going out there. So--what the devil am I to
do? He rubbed it in that I'm full young, and no hurry--but I feel
there's something else at the back of his mind."

He paused--and she could hesitate no longer.

"Yes, Roy--there is something else----"

"Then _why_ can't he speak out?"

"Not to be so impatient," she rebuked him gently. "It is because he so
beautifully remains--my lover, he cannot put in words--any thought that
might give----" She flung out an appealing hand. "Oh, Roy--can you not
guess the trouble? He is afraid--for your marriage----"

"My marriage!" It was clear he did not yet grasp the truth. "Really,
Mummy, that's a trifle previous. I'm not even thinking of marriage."

"No, Stupid One! But out there you might come to think of it! No man can
tell when Kama, godling of the