e talk
about them. All Darjeeling is scandalised, and that's saying a good
deal! My friend writes that the woman nursed him while he was ill from
sunstroke in some outlandish station in Bengal, and they became
fearfully intimate. These nurses know a thing or two and can make
themselves indispensable if they like. Men generally find them
irresistible. However, it is rather rough on his wife at home, when you
come to think of it."

"What has the nurse to do with him, now that he has recovered?"

"Ah, that's the point! She stays at the same hotel nominally looking
after a delicate baby whose parents are in the plains; but the kid gets
precious little of her attention. It is left to the ayah's tender
mercies while the nurse goes about with Mr. Meredith. They are never
seen apart, and she spends most of her time in his rooms. It puts me in
mind of that divorce case you may remember two years ago at Simla,
when"--and the conversation was diverted into other channels.

Meanwhile, Joyce was hot and cold with conflicting emotions. Without
question, it was her husband they had been discussing, for he was in the
Indian Civil Service, and had been sent to Darjeeling to convalesce
after the sunstroke, which had seized him in the District of Muktiarbad,
the "outlandish station" referred to.

By the light of this conversation Honor's letter was explained. She,
too, had heard of the doings at Darjeeling, and in her anxiety had
written that letter imploring her friend to return.

Well--she was returning, but to what?

Her husband was apparently content to be without her--which would
account for the cable message he had sent her on the outbreak of war,
forbidding her to travel.

Joyce rose from her deck chair with a face as white as the foam on the
crested waves, and stumbled to her cabin. "It is nothing," she explained
to fellow-passengers who offered assistance thinking she was likely to
collapse, "only a stupid attack of dizziness--I thought I was a better
sailor, that's all," and she tried to smile.

Kitty was sent to her in hot haste to see what she could do, and was
told the same thing. "I'll be all right after a bit."

"Are you sure?"

"Perfectly," was the assured answer, for Joyce was already determined
not to go down under the blow, but to fight to a finish. Ray--her
husband--false to her? The shame of it--the humiliation, would be
unbearable, if what she had heard were true! It was possible that gossip
had exaggera