had been so grudgingly dealt out to him
when ambition was at its height, when a word or two of generous
recognition would have atoned in some measure for the failure and
embitterment of his private life. Finally, they commiserated with the
man on whom would devolve the insuperable task of replacing a Dudley
Norton.

He arrived in due course:--a stop-gap from an obscure down-country
station; a man of hide-bound conventionalism, who brought with him
three children and a washed-out, subdued-looking wife, and who spoke
magnanimously of Norton as "a clever fellow, of course, but deplorably
casual officially." With such haphazard shifting of pawns on the
chess-board is the momentous game of Empire played. Yet long after
Dudley Norton's name had been almost forgotten by the overtasked,
fluctuating world of Anglo-India, it still remained a household word
among the Mahsud Waziris, whose brothers in blood had so treacherously
taken his life.

And while Norton lay dying at the Desmonds' bungalow, Richardson was
established under his friend's roof as a matter of course. For this is
India: the land of the Good Samaritan, as those who have lived there
longest know best. It has been well said that "an Englishman's house
in India is not his castle, but a thousand better things--a casual
ward, a convalescent home, a rest-house for the strayed traveller; and
he himself is the steward of it merely." That this is no exaggeration
but simple fact, Quita had already seen; and now, when she herself was
called upon to obey the unwritten law of her husband's country and
service, Lenox noted, with a throb of pride, that for all her artist's
tendency to shrink from pain and suffering, she rose to the situation
like a high-mettled horse to a fence.

On their first evening together, when Dick, under the merciful
influence of morphia, had forgotten pain in sleep, Lenox spoke to her
of the thought that troubled his mind.

He was lying back luxuriously in his deep chair--the wounded shoulder
and left arm scientifically bandaged--while Quita hovered about him, or
knelt at his side; her every tone and gesture, and the misty shining of
her eyes, enveloping him in so exquisite an atmosphere of tenderness
that, like Stevenson, Lenox felt inclined to vote for separations (not
to say wounds) when they were both safely over!

"Come here a minute, darling," he said at length, drawing her down
beside him. "I want to tell you about Dick. There's n