-on the
surface at least.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 35: It is an order.]

CHAPTER XI

"Why did'st thou promise such a beauteous day,

* * * * *

To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke!"
--SHAKSPERE.

And away up in Simla, Rose Arden was enduring her own minor form of
purgatory. The news of Lance Desmond's sudden death had startled and
saddened her; had pierced through her surface serenity to the deep
places of a nature that was not altogether shallow under its veneer of
egotism and coquetry.

On a morning, near the end of April, she sat alone in the garden under
deodar boughs tasselled with tips of young green. In a border, beyond
the lawn, spring flowers were awake; the bank was starred with white
violets and wild-strawberry blossoms; and through a gap in the ilex
trees beyond, she had a vision of far hills and flashing snow-peaks,
blue-white in the sun, cobalt in shadow. Overhead, among the higher
branches, a bird was trilling out an ecstatic love-song.

But the year's renewal, the familiar flutter of Simla's awakening,
sharpened, rather, that new ache at her heart; the haunting, incredible
thought that down there, in the stifling dusty plains, Lance Desmond lay
dead in the springtime of his splendid manhood; dead of his own generous
impulse to save Roy from hurt.

Since the news came, she had avoided sociabilities and, unobtrusively,
worn no colours. Foolish and fatuous, was it? Perhaps. She only knew
that--Lance being gone--she could not make _no_ difference in her daily
round, whatever others might think or say.

And the mere fact of his being gone seemed strangely to revive the
memory of his love for her, of her own genuine, if inadequate,
response. For she had been more nearly in love with him than with any of
his predecessors (and there had been several), who had been admitted to
the privileged intimacies of the half-accepted lover. More: he had
commanded her admiration; and she had not been woman could she have held
out indefinitely against his passionate, whole-hearted devotion.

After months of patient wooing--and he by nature impatient--he had
insisted that matters be settled, one way or the other, before he went
on leave; and she had almost reached the point of decision, when Roy,
with his careless charm and challenging detachment, appeared on the
scen