hem was unconscious. The women tried to avoid each other without
accenting it, exchanging light words only as occasion demanded, but they
were not clever enough for Mrs. Gammidge and Mrs. Mickie, who went
about saying that Mrs. Innes's treatment of Madeline Anderson was as
ridiculous as it was inexplicable. 'Did you ever know her to be jealous
of anybody before?' demanded Mrs. Mickie, to which Mrs. Gammidge
responded, with her customary humour, that the Colonel had never, in the
memory of the oldest inhabitant, been known to give her occasion.

'Well,' declared Mrs. Mickie, 'if friendships--UNSENTIMENTAL
friendships--between men and women are not understood in Simla, I'd like
to be told what is understood.'

Between them they gave Madeline a noble support, for which--although she
did not particularly require it, and they did not venture to offer it in
so many words--she was grateful. A breath of public criticism from
any point of view would have blown over the toppling structure she was
defending against her conscience. The siege was severe and obstinate,
with an undermining conviction ever at work that in the end she would
yield; in the end she would go away, at least as far as Bombay or
Calcutta, and from there send to Mrs. Innes the news of her liberation.
It would not be necessary, after all, or even excusable, to tell Horace.
His wife would do that quickly enough--at least, she had said she
would. If she didn't--well, if she didn't, nothing would be possible but
another letter, giving HIM the simple facts, she, Madeline, carefully
out of the way of his path of duty--at all events, at Calcutta or
Bombay. But there was no danger that Mrs. Innes would lose the advantage
of confession, of throwing herself on his generosity--and at this
point Madeline usually felt her defenses against her better nature
considerably strengthened, and the date of her sacrifice grow vague
again.

Meanwhile, she was astonished to observe that, in spite of her threat
to the contrary, Mrs. Innes appeared to be enjoying herself particularly
well. Madeline had frequent occasion for private comment on the
advantages of a temperament that could find satisfaction in dancing
through whole programmes at the very door, so to speak, of the criminal
courts; and it can not be denied that this capacity of Mrs. Innes's went
far to increase the vacillation with which Miss Anderson considered
her duty towards that lady. If she had shown traces of a single