d on the mountainside, and the wooden board painted
'Branksome Hall, Maj.-Gen. T.P. Worsley, R.E.,' nailed to the most
conspicuous tree from the main road, was invisible in the darkness.
Madeline arrived in consequence at the wrong dinner-party, and was
acclaimed and redirected with much gaiety, which gave her a further
agreeable impression of the insouciance of Simla, but made her later
still at the Worsleys. So that half the people were already seated when
she at last appeared, and her hostess had just time to cry, 'My dear,
we thought the langurs must have eaten you! Captain Gordon, you are not
abandoned after all. You know Miss Anderson?' when she found herself
before her soup.

Captain Gordon heard her account of herself with complacence, and
declared, wiping his moustache, that a similar experience had befallen
him only a fortnight before.

'Did you ever hear the story of that absent-minded chap, Sir James
Jackson, who went to the RIGHT dinner-party by mistake?' he asked, 'and
apologized like mad, by Jove! and insisted he couldn't stay. The people
nearly had to tie him down in his--' Captain Gordon stopped, arrested by
his companion's sudden and complete inattention.

'I see a lady,' interrupted Madeline, with odd distinctness, 'curiously
like somebody I have known before.' Her eyes convinced themselves, and
then refused to be convinced of the inconceivable fact that they were
resting on Violet Prendergast. It was at first too amazing, too amazing
only. Then an old forgotten feeling rose in her bosom; the hand on
the stem of her wine-glass grew tense. The sensation fell away; she
remembered her emancipation, the years arose and reassured her during
which Violet Prendergast, living or dead, had been to her of absolutely
no importance. Yet there was a little aroused tremour in her voice as
she went on, 'She is on the General's right--he must have taken her in.
Can you see from where you are sitting?'

'These narrow oval tables are a nuisance that way, aren't they? You
don't know who you're dining with till the end of the function. Oh! I
see--that's Mrs. Innes, just out, and fresh as paint, isn't she? The
Colonel'--Captain Gordon craned his head again--'is sitting fourth from
me on this side.'

'Mrs. Innes! Really!' said Madeline. 'Then--then of course I must be
mistaken.'

She removed her eyes almost stealthily from the other woman's face
and fixed them on the pattern of the table-cloth. Her brain guided her