and the distracting sense of being
purely responsible for his own trouble, stung him to renewed irritation.
All capacity for work had been dispelled by that vexatiously engaging
son of his, with his heart in India and his head among the stars....

Weary of pacing, he took out his pipe and sat down in the window-seat to
fill it. He was interrupted by the sound of an unmistakable footstep;
and the response of his whole being justified to admiration Lilamani's
assurance that his hidden trouble implied no lightest reflection on
herself. Lilamani and irritation simply could not co-exist within him;
and he was on his feet when she opened the door.

She did not come forward at once. Pushing it shut with both hands, she
stood so--a hovering question in her eyes. It recalled, with a tender
pang, the earlier days of worshipful aloofness, when only by special
invitation would she intimately approach her lord.

That she might guess his thought he held out his arms. "Come
along--English wife!"

It had been their private password. But her small teeth imprisoned her
lip.

"No--King of me--Indian wife: making too much trouble again!"

"Lilamani! How dare you! Come here."

His attempt at sternness took effect. In one swift rush--sari blown
backward--she came: and he, smitten with self-reproach, folded her
close; while she clung to him in mute passionate response.

"Beloved," she whispered. "Not to worry any more in your secret heart. I
told--he understands."

"Roy----? My darling! But _what_----?" His incoherence was a shameless
admission of relief. "You couldn't--you haven't told him----?"

"Nevil, I have told him all. I saw lately this trouble in your thoughts:
and to-day it came in my mind that only I could speak--could give
command that--one kind of marriage must _not_ be."

He drew her closer, and she suppressed a small sigh.

"Wasn't the boy angry?"

"Only at first--on account of me. He is--so very darling, so
worshipping--his foolish little Mother."

"A weakness he shares with his father," Nevil assured her: and in that
whispered confession she had her reward. For after twenty-three years of
marriage, the note of loverly extravagance is as rare as the note of the
cuckoo in July.

"Sit, little woman." He drew her down to the window-seat, keeping an arm
round her. "The relief it is to feel I can talk it all over with you
freely. Where the dickens would we be, Roy and I, without our
interpreter? And she does it a