[Footnote 36: Government by order.]

CHAPTER XII.

"She had a step that walked unheard,
It made the stones like grass;
Yet that light step had crushed a heart
As light as that step was."
--W.H. DAVIES.

At last, Roy was actually coming. The critical moment was upon them; and
Rose sat alone in the drawing-room awaiting him.

Her mother was out; had arranged to be out for the evening also. The
strain between them still continued; and it told most on Rose. The
cat-like element in her loved comfort; and an undercurrent of clash was
peculiarly irritating in her present sore, uncertain state of heart.
Weeks of it, she knew, would scarcely leave a dent on her mother's
leathern temperament. When it came to a tug the tougher nature scored,
which was one reason why she had so skilfully avoided tugs hitherto.

True, she was of age; and her father's small legacy gave her a measure
of independence. But how could one set about getting married in the face
of open opposition? And--how keep the truth from Roy? Or tone it down,
so that he would not go off at a tangent straightaway?

Assuredly the Fates had conspired to strip her headlong romance of its
gilded trappings. But her moment for marriage had come. She was sick to
death of the Anglo-Indian round--from the unattached standpoint, at
least. Roy fascinated her as few men had done; and she had been
deliberately trying to ignore the effect of her mother's brutal
frankness. Their coming together again, in these changed conditions,
would be the ultimate test. Such a chasm of distance seemed to yawn
between that tender parting in her boudoir and this critical
reunion--in another world....

Sounds of arrival brought her to her feet; but she checked the natural
impulse to welcome him in the verandah. Her innate sense of drama shrank
from possible awkwardness, a false step, at the start.

And now he appeared in the doorway--very straight and slim in his grey
suit, with the sorrowful black band on his arm.

"Rose!" he cried--and stood gazing at her, pulses hammering, brain
dizzy. The mere sight of her brought back too vividly the memory of
those April days that he had been resolutely shutting out of his mind.

His pause--the shock of his changed aspect--held her motionless also. He
looked older, more sallow; his sensitive mouth compressed; no lurking
gleam in his eyes. He seemed actually less good-looking