Evelyn Desmond's natural lack of discernment,
her blindness to the subtle impertinence of flattery, and her zeal for
tennis--a game seldom patronised by cavalrymen,--had worked all
together for good; and Kresney had gone forward accordingly, nothing
loth.

He had looked to the riding picnic to mark a definite step in advance,
and Mrs Desmond's intention of inviting them was beyond doubt.
Remained the inference that Desmond had used either authority or
persuasion to prevent it.

The idea stirred up all the dregs of the man's soul. A sudden
bitterness overwhelmed him--a sense of the futility of attempting to
strike at a man so obviously favoured by the gods; a man who held his
head so resolutely above the minor trivialities of life.

But the will to strike would soon or late evolve a way. There were
other means of achieving intimacy with a woman as inexperienced as
little Mrs Desmond, and he would get Linda to help him. Linda was a
good girl, if a trifle stupid. At least she had the merit of believing
in him and obeying his wishes with unquestioning fidelity--a very
creditable merit in the eyes of the average man.

These reflections brought him to a standstill by one of the doors that
opened into the drawing-room. It was a long narrow room of an
aggressively Anglo-Indian type--overcrowded with aimless tables,
painted stools and chairs in crumpled bazaar muslins, or glossy with
Aspinall's enamel. The dingy walls were peppered with Japanese fans,
China plates, liliputian brackets, and photographs in plush frames.
Had Miss Kresney taken her stand on each door-sill in turn and flung
her possessions, without aim or design, at the whitewashed spaces
around her, she could not have produced a more admired disorder. This
she recognised with a thrill of pride; for she aspired to be artistic,
and some misguided friend had assured her that the one thing needful
was to avoid symmetry or regularity in any form.

Her own appearance harmonised admirably with her surroundings. She
wore the shapeless tea-gown beloved of her kind--made in the verandah,
and finished with dingy lace at the neck and wrists, and even at this
hour a suggestion of straw slippers showed beneath the limp silk of
her gown. Yet, as Evelyn Desmond saw her on the tennis-courts, she was
a neatly clad, angular girl of eight-and-twenty, with a suppressed,
furtive air that was an unconscious reflection upon her brother's
character. In her heart she cherished a lurki