harder than ever; giving nothing away to the world; winning
steadily the curious, uneasy admiration that men feel for those who
combine reckless daring with an ice-cool manner. Since he was less of a
talker even than most of his kind, and had never in his life talked of
women, he did not gain the reputation of a woman-hater, though he so
manifestly avoided them. After six years' service in India and Egypt, he
lost his right hand in a charge against dervishes, and had, perforce, to
retire, with the rank of major, aged thirty-four. For a long time he had
hated the very thought of the child--his child, in giving birth to whom
the woman he loved had died. Then came a curious change of feeling; and
for three years before his return to England, he had been in the habit
of sending home odds and ends picked up in the bazaars, to serve as
toys. In return, he had received, twice annually at least, a letter
from the man who thought himself Gyp's father. These letters he read and
answered. The squire was likable, and had been fond of HER; and though
never once had it seemed possible to Winton to have acted otherwise than
he did, he had all the time preserved a just and formal sense of the
wrong he had done this man. He did not experience remorse, but he had
always an irksome feeling as of a debt unpaid, mitigated by knowledge
that no one had ever suspected, and discounted by memory of the awful
torture he had endured to make sure against suspicion.

When, plus distinction and minus his hand, he was at last back in
England, the squire had come to see him. The poor man was failing fast
from Bright's disease. Winton entered again that house in Mount Street
with an emotion, to stifle which required more courage than any cavalry
charge. But one whose heart, as he would have put it, is "in the right
place" does not indulge the quaverings of his nerves, and he faced those
rooms where he had last seen her, faced that lonely little dinner with
her husband, without sign of feeling. He did not see little Ghita, or
Gyp, as she had nicknamed herself, for she was already in her bed; and
it was a whole month before he brought himself to go there at an hour
when he could see the child if he would. The fact is, he was afraid.
What would the sight of this little creature stir in him? When Betty,
the nurse, brought her in to see the soldier gentleman with "the leather
hand," who had sent her those funny toys, she stood calmly staring with
her large,