and faced
her friend. Then Honor saw that her cheeks were wet and her eyes
brimming with tears.

It is to be feared that her first sensation was one of pure annoyance.
Evelyn thoroughly deserved a scolding: and here she was, as usual,
disarming rebuke by her genuine distress.

"_Now_, I suppose he'll go--and get _killed!_" she said, in a choked
voice.

"My dear child, what nonsense! He'll come back safe enough. You don't
deserve that he should be so patient with you--you don't indeed!"

Evelyn looked up at her with piteous drowned eyes, whose expression
had the effect of making Honor feel altogether in the wrong.

"He shouldn't have made such disagreeable remarks about me and the
Kresneys, then," she said brokenly. "All the same, I wanted to speak
to him. But--I was crying, and I couldn't make a scene--with _you_
there. And now--if anything happens to him, and--I never see him
again,--it'll be all _your_ fault!"

With that finely illogical conclusion she swept out of the room,
leaving Honor serenely unimpressed by her own share in the impending
tragedy, yet not a little troubled at thought of the man who, for the
rest of his natural life, lay at the mercy of such bewildering methods
of reasoning.

CHAPTER V.

AN EXPURGATED EDITION.

"A little lurking secret of the blood;
A little serpent secret, rankling keen."

The Kresneys looked in vain for the coveted invitation, and the
trifling circumstance loomed largely on their narrow horizon.

Owen Kresney possessed in a high degree that talent for discovering or
inventing slights which is pride of race run crooked, and reveals the
taint of mixed blood in a man's veins. As District Superintendent of
Police he had relieved his predecessor in the middle of the hot
weather. His sister being at Mussoorie, he had arrived alone; and, in
accordance with the friendly spirit of the Frontier, had been made an
honorary member of the station Mess, where he had found himself very
much a stranger in a strange land.

The man's self-conceit was unlimited; his sense of humour _nil_; and
in less than a month he had been unanimously voted a "_pukka_[12]
bounder" by that isolated community of Englishmen, who played as hard
as they worked, and invariably "played the game"; a code of morals
which had apparently been left out of Kresney's desultory education.
The fact revealed itself in a hundred infinitesimal ways, and each
revelation added a fresh stone to the wa