urse she will! She
will adore you. All women do."

"Oh, not quite!" protested Bernard modestly. "I'm not tall enough to
please everyone of the feminine gender. But you think your wife will
overlook that?"

"I know," said Everard, with conviction.

His brother laughed with cheery self-satisfaction. "In that case, of
course I shall adore her," he said.

CHAPTER VII

FALSE PRETENCES

They were a merry party at mess that night. General Sir Reginald Bassett
was a man of the bluff soldierly order who knew how to command respect
from his inferiors while at the same time he set them at their ease.
There was no pomp and circumstance about him, yet in the whole of the
Indian Empire there was not an officer more highly honoured and few who
possessed such wide influence as "old Sir Reggie," as irreverent
subalterns fondly called him.

The new arrival, Bernard Monck, diffused a genial atmosphere quite
unconsciously wherever he went, and he and the old Indian soldier
gravitated towards each other almost instinctively. Colonel Mansfield
declared later that they made it impossible for him to maintain order,
so spontaneous and so infectious was the gaiety that ran round the
board. Even Major Ralston's leaden sense of humour was stirred. As Tommy
had declared, it promised to be a historic occasion.

When the time for toasts arrived and, after the usual routine, the
Colonel proposed the health of their honoured guest of the evening, Sir
Reginald interposed with a courteous request that that of their other
guest might be coupled with his, and the dual toast was drunk with
acclamations.

"I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing more of you during your stay
in India," the General remarked to his fellow-guest when he had returned
thanks and quiet was restored. "You have come for the winter, I
presume."

Bernard laughed. "Well, no, sir, though I shall hope to see it through.
I am not globe-trotting, and times and seasons don't affect me much. My
only reason for coming out at all was to see my brother here. You see,
we haven't met for a good many years."

The statement was quite casually made, but Major Burton, who was seated
next to him, made a sharp movement as if startled. He was a man who
prided himself upon his astuteness in discovering discrepancies in even
the most truthful stories.

"Didn't you meet last year when he went Home?" he said.

"Last year! No. He wasn't Home last year." Bernard looked full at his