ou did? Now I'm going to change for
dinner; and do please make yourself agreeable to Mrs Norton this
evening."

For the Deputy Commissioner's wife was honouring her husband with a
flying visit, before going north to spend the season in Simla.

"The devil take Mrs Norton. Odious woman!"

"No,--it's _you_ that will have to take her!" she answered, laughing.
"And it's not my fault that you won't have your beautiful Honor on the
other side to keep the balance true."

Quita enjoyed her little dinner, and saw to it that others did
likewise. She was a natural-born hostess. Talk never flagged in her
neighbourhood, and her own lack of self-consciousness set the stiffest
and shyest at their ease. Besides, she always enjoyed talking to
Norton, whose cynicism and critical attitude she disarmed by the simple
means of ignoring them. She liked the man's plain, hard-featured face,
ploughed with deep lines of thought and effort, and only redeemed from
ugliness by his remarkable eyes.

"Stoking up!" he remarked grimly, sipping his soup with a keen
appreciation of its quality. "Punkahs and hell-fire again in no time.
One hardly has time to cool down before the winter slips away. Mrs
Norton's off to Simla in ten days; and I suppose you'll be bolting also
by the end of next month?"

She laughed, and shook her head. "If you're counting on getting my
husband to chum with you this hot weather, I'm afraid you'll be
disappointed."

He eyed her quizzically for a moment.

"Of course--I forgot. You're a new broom! If I meet you in March
three or four years hence, I shall hear another story."

"And enjoy the triumph of your own cynicism! Very well, I accept your
challenge. I shall write to you three years from now, just to tell you
how the land lies."

"Do. And if you forget, I shall hear of you from some one else. We
know all one another's little doings in this corner of the world. I
feel curious about you, and prophesy that Simla and amateur theatricals
will carry the day; though for Lenox's sake I hope all the triumph will
be on your side. But it's no light matter, I can tell you, to win your
spurs as a Frontier officer's wife of the right quality."

"Like Mrs Desmond, for instance?"

"Quite so. Like Mrs Desmond."

"I notice all the cynicism goes out of your voice when you speak of
her. Yet you can make insulting prophecies about _me_, at my own table
too! Am I so immeasurably inferior?"

"That remains to be