the
past. No one ever mentioned Nick to her now--not even her faithful
correspondent Olga. Meteor-like, he had flashed through her sky and
disappeared; leaving a burning, ineradicable trail behind him, it is
true, but none the less was he gone. She had not the faintest idea
where he was. She would have given all she had to know, yet could not
bring herself to ask. It seemed highly improbable that he would ever
cross her path again, and she knew she ought to be glad of this; yet
no gladness ever warmed her heart. And now here was a man who had
known him, who had told her of exploits new to her knowledge yet how
strangely familiar to her understanding, who had at a touch brought
before her the weird personality that her imagination sometimes
strove in vain to summon. She could have sat and listened to Bobby's
reminiscences for hours. The bare mention of Nick's name had made her
blood run faster.

Lady Bassett did not trouble her to converse during the drive back,
ascribing to her evident desire for silence a reason which Muriel was
too absent to suspect. But when the girl roused herself to throw a
couple of annas to an old beggar who was crouched against the entrance
to the Residency grounds she could not resist giving utterance to a
gentle expostulation.

"I wish you would not encourage these people, dearest. They are so
extremely undesirable, and there is so much unrest in the State just
now that I cannot but regard them with anxiety."

Muriel murmured an apology, with the inward reservation to bestow her
alms next time when Lady Bassett was not looking on.

She found a letter lying on her table when she entered her room,
and took it up listlessly, without much interest. Her mind was
still running on those two anecdotes with which Bobby Fraser had so
successfully enlivened her boredom. The writing on the envelope was
vaguely familiar to her, but she did not associate it with anything
of importance. Absently she opened it, half reluctant to recall her
wandering thoughts. It came from a Hill station in Bengal, but that
told her nothing. She turned to the signature.

The next instant she had turned back again to the beginning, and was
reading eagerly. Her correspondent was Will Musgrave.

"Dear Miss Roscoe,"--ran the letter. "After long consideration
I have decided to write and beg of you a favour which I fancy
you will grant more readily than I venture to ask. My wife, as
you probably know, joined