mall section of
womankind that I encountered were above and beyond flirtations.

"I don't think," he went on seriously, "that you in England can
quite realise what it was, or that a woman in London society can
imagine that there can exist a state of things in which dress and
appearance are matters which have altogether ceased to engross the
female mind. The white women I saw there were worn and haggard. No
matter what their age, they bore on their faces the impress of
terrible hardship, terrible danger, and terrible grief and anxiety.
Few but had lost someone dear to them, many all whom they cared
for. A few had made some pitiful attempt at neatness, but most had
lost all thought of self, all care whatever for personal
appearance. There was an anxious look in their eyes that was
painful to witness."

"I spoke without thinking," the girl said, gravely. "It must have
been awful--awful, as you say. It is impossible for us really to
imagine quite what it was, or to picture up such scenes as you must
have witnessed. I can understand that all this must seem frivolous
and contemptible to you."

"No, I don't go so far as that," he smiled. "It is good that there
should be butterflies as well as bees; and, at any rate, the women
of India, who had the reputation of being as frivolous and
pleasure-loving as the rest of their sex, came out nobly and showed
a degree of patience under suffering and of heroic courage
unsurpassable in history.

"I am afraid," he said, as the hostess gave the signal for the
ladies to rise, "you will long look back upon this dinner as one of
unprecedented dullness."

"Not dullness," she smiled. "Exceptional certainly, but as
something so different from the usual thing, when one talks of
nothing but the opera, the theatres and exhibitions, as to deserve
to be put down in one's diary by a mark. I won't flatter you by
telling you whether a red or a black one."

"Who are the party going to be, Mallett?" his friend Colonel Severn
said, as they stood together on the deck of the Osprey early in
August. "You guaranteed that it would be a pleasant one when you
persuaded me to leave London, for the first time since I retired,
before shooting began."

"Well, to begin with, there is Lady Greendale, an eminently
pleasant woman. She comes as general chaperon, and I shall consider
her under your especial care. You will not find it hard work, for
she is an eminently sympathetic woman, ready to chat if you are