out with such unfailing kindness that
vexation pricked and stung her, like thorns under the skin. She might
have told him after all. He would not have been angry. Now she had
been forestalled. She failed to perceive that the backslidings of his
wife must of necessity touch him more nearly than those of his
subaltern, and that to her own extravagance was added a host of petty
evasions and deceits such as a man of his type would be little able to
condone or understand.

"You see," he was saying when her mind harked back from the excursion
into her own point of view, "the poor fellow has done all he can
towards putting matters straight, and I am thankful I can manage the
rest myself, so as to give him a fair start for the future."

"But how much is--_your_ share?" she asked, almost in a whisper.

"Rather more than eight hundred rupees."

"And you have actually--_done_ it, Theo?"

"Yes. You surely couldn't have wished otherwise?"

For a moment she hesitated, then her repressed bitterness brimmed
over.

"Oh, I don't know. Only I think you might have considered _me_ a
little first. I've more right to your money than he has; and if you
can afford to throw away eight hundred rupees on a careless,
extravagant subaltern, you could quite well let me go to Simla; or at
least add something to my dress allowance. It's not so very easy to
manage on the little you give me."

She spoke with averted face in a tone of clear hardness, and each word
smote her husband like a small sharp stone.

"I am sorry you see it that way," he said, a new restraint in his
voice, "and that you don't find your allowance sufficient. I give you
all I can, and you seem to have pretty frocks enough, anyhow. If I had
eight hundred rupees to throw away,--as you choose to express it,--I
should hardly have spoken of putting ourselves out; in fact, I
shouldn't have spoken at all. But you have been such good friends with
the Boy all along that I hoped you would be ready to help give him a
hand up. I can only manage such a sum by knocking two hundred off my
pay for the next four months. This means cutting down expenses a
little; but we can easily do it, Ladybird--_if_ we pull together."

At any other time such an appeal from Theo would have proved
irresistible, would have drawn them into a closer union of thought and
purpose than they had ever attained as yet. But the appeal came at the
wrong moment, and Evelyn Desmond sat silent, her hands so fast
inter