s conscious
of a sudden recoil--a purely physical revulsion; to which was added
the galling thought that she owed her recent suffering and humiliation
to her intimacy with a man who could look like that!

As she turned in at the gate, he sprang up and ran down the steps. Her
return astounded him. He was prepared for anything at that moment,
except the thing that happened--a common human experience.

"Back again, Mrs Desmond!" he cried cheerfully. "This is a most
unexpected pleasure. _Rukho jhampan._"[31]

[31] Set down the jhampan.

But Evelyn countermanded the order so promptly that Kresney's eyebrows
went up. She handed him her note, clutching the wooden pole nervously
with the other hand.

"I had to come out again--on business," she said, with that ready
mingling of the false and true which had been her undoing. "And I
thought I could leave this for Miss Kresney as I passed. Will you
please give it to her. I am sorry she is not in."

He took the envelope, and watched her while she spoke with narrowed
eyes.

"You are in trouble?" The intimate note in his voice jarred for the
first time. "Something has upset you since you left? You are quite
knocked up with all this. You ought to have been in Murree two weeks
ago."

And, presumably by accident, his hand came down upon her own. She drew
it away with an involuntary shudder; and Kresney's sallow face
darkened.

"You have no business to say that," she rebuked him with desperate
courage; "I prefer to be with my husband till he is well enough to go
too. You won't forget my note, will you? Good-night."

"Good-night, Mrs Desmond," he answered formally, without proffering
his hand.

As he stood watching her depart, all that was worst in him rose to the
surface and centred in his close-set eyes. "By God, you shall be sorry
for that!" he muttered.

But in mounting the steps his curiosity was awakened by the bulkiness
of Linda's letter. He turned it over once or twice; pressed it between
his fingers and detected the crackle of new bank-notes.

"So that's it, is it? Well, I can forgive her. No doubt she had a
jolly hot quarter of an hour; and I hope that fellow is enjoying
himself now--_like hell!_" Then, without a glimmer of hesitation, he
opened his sister's letter.

* * * * *

And, out in the road, Evelyn's jhampanis were experiencing fresh proof
of the indubitable madness of Memsahibs.

No sooner were their faces set cheerfu