all
grey and green, solidly ideal, with phantasies of mist. Everything
drippingly soft and silent. Suddenly the venetian blind that hung before
the door of a bedroom farther on swayed out before a hand variously
ringed to emit a lady in a pink lawn dress with apt embroideries.
Madeline's half-closed eyes opened very wide, and for an instant she and
the lady, to whom I must once more refer as Mrs. Innes, confronted each
other. Then Mrs. Innes's countenance expanded, and she took three or
four light steps forward.

'Oh, you dear thing!' she exclaimed. 'I thought you were in Simla!
Imagine you being here! Do you know you have SAVED me!'

Madeline regarded her in silence, while a pallor spread over her face
and lips, and her features grew sharp with a presage of pain.

'Have I?' she stammered. She could not think.

'Indeed you have. I don't know how to be grateful enough to you. Your
telegram of yesterday reached me at Solon. We had just sat down to
tiffin. Nothing will ever shake my faith in providence again! My dear,
THINK of it--after all I've been through, my darling Val--and one
hundred thousand pounds!'

'Well?'

'Well--I stayed behind there last night, and Val came on here and made
the necessary arrangement, and--'

'Yes?'

'And we were married this morning. Good heavens! What's the matter with
you! Here--oh, Brookes! Water, salts--anything!'

Brookes, I know, would think that I should dwell at greater length upon
Miss Anderson's attack of faintness in Kalka, and the various measures
which were resorted to for her succour, but perhaps the feelings and
expedients of any really capable lady's-maid under the circumstances may
be taken for granted. I feel more seriously called upon to explain that
Colonel Horace Innes, shortly after these last events, took two years'
furlough to England, during which he made a very interesting tour in
the United States with the lady with now bears his name by inalienable
right. Captain and Mrs. Valentine Drake are getting the most that is to
be had out of Frederick Prendergast's fortune with courage in London and
the European capitals, where Mrs. Drake is sometimes mentioned as a
lady with a romantic past. They have not returned to Simla, where the
situation has never been properly understood. People always supposed
that Mrs. Drake ran away that June morning with her present husband, who
must have been tremendously fond of her to have married her 'after the
divorce.' She is