and looked round the room
before recognizing the identity of its remaining occupant. Then:

"Ah! you--dear witch," he said. "So you're home. And what of your drive?"

Damaris turned round, all of a piece. Her hands, white against the black,
the fingers slightly apart, still pressed back the skirt of her dress as
though saving it from the fire scorch, in quaintly careful childish
fashion. Her complexion was that of a child too, in its soft brightness.
And the wonder of her great eyes fairly challenged Carteret's wits.

"A babe of a thousand years," he quoted to himself. "Does that look grow
out of a root of divine innocence, or of quite incalculable wisdom?"

"I told you if you would be patient with me I should begin again. I have
begun again, dear Colonel Sahib."

"So I perceive," he answered her.

"Is it written so large?" she asked curiously.

"Very large," he said, falling in with her humour. "And where does the
beginning lead to?"

"I wish you'd tell me.--Henrietta has begun again too."

"I know it," he said. "Our incomparable Henrietta overtook me on her way
from here to the Vicarage, and bestowed her society on me for the better
part of half an hour. She was in astonishing form."

Carteret came forward and stood on the tiger skin beside Damaris. Mrs.
Frayling's conversation had given him very furiously to think, and his
thoughts had not proved by any means exhilarating.

"Does this recrudescence of our Henrietta, her beginning again, affect
the scope and direction of your own beginning again, dearest witch?" he
presently enquired, in singularly restrained and colourless accents.

"That depends a good deal upon you--doesn't it, Colonel Sahib?" our
maiden gravely answered.

Carteret felt as though she dealt him a blow. The pain was numbing. He
could neither see, nor could he think clearly. But he traced Mrs.
Frayling's hand in this, and could have cursed her elaborately--had it
been worth while. But was anything worth while, just now? He inclined to
believe not--so called himself a doating fool. And then, though
tormented, shaken, turned his mind to making things easy for Damaris.

"Oh! I see that," he told her. "And now you have got hold of your
precious little self again and made a start, it's easy enough to manage
your affairs--in as far as they need any management of mine--from a
distance. This beginning again is triumphant. I congratulate you! You're
your own best physician. You know how to treat