ded in slipping away unnoticed a few minutes
earlier. She alone, among them all, had spoken no word of gratitude to
her friend.

CHAPTER IX.

WE'LL JUST FORGET.

"Les petites choses ont leur importance; c'est par elles
toujours qu'on se perde."--DOSTOIEVSKY.

"So the picnic was a success?"

"Yes, quite. Mrs Rivers was so clever. She paired us off beautifully.
My pair was Captain Winthrop of the Ghurkas; an awfully nice man. He
talked to me the whole time. He knows Theo. Says he's the finest
fellow in Asia! Rather nice to be married to the 'finest fellow in
Asia,' isn't it?"

"Decidedly. But I don't think we needed _him_ to tell us that sort of
thing." A touch of the girl's incurable pride flashed in her eyes.

"Well, I was pleased all the same. He said he was never so surprised
in his life as when he heard Theo had married; but now he had seen me,
he didn't feel surprised any more."

"That was impertinence."

"Not a bit! I thought it was rather nice."

A trifling difference of opinion; but, in point of character, it
served to set the two women miles apart.

Evelyn's remark scarcely needed a reply; and Honor fell into a
thoughtful silence.

She had allowed herself the rare indulgence of a day "off duty."
Instead of accompanying Evelyn to the picnic, she had enjoyed a
scrambling excursion with Mrs Conolly--whose friendship was fast
becoming a real possession--and her two big babies; exploring
hillsides and ravines; hunting up the rarer wild flowers and ferns;
and lunching off sandwiches on a granite boulder overhanging
infinity. This was her idea of enjoying life in the Himalayas; but the
June sun proved a little exhausting; and she was aware of an unusual
weariness as she lay back in her canvas chair in the verandah of "The
Deodars,"--a woodland cottage, owing its pretentious name to the
magnificent cedars that stood sentinel on either side of it.

Her eyes turned for comfort and refreshment to the stainless wonder of
the snows, that were already beginning to don their evening
jewels--coral and amethyst, opal and pearl. The railed verandah, and
its sweeping sprays of honeysuckle, were delicately etched upon a sky
of warm amber, shading through gradations of nameless colour into
blue, where cloud-films lay like fairy islands in an enchanted sea.
Faint whiffs of rose and honeysuckle hovered in the still air, like
spirits of the coming twilight, entangling sense and soul in a
sweetness