r in
her manner which seemed to add to her stature and give a regal carriage
to her beautiful head.

"So you are travelling all alone to Darjeeling?" Honor asked wistfully,
wondering what was going to be the upshot of that journey.

"It is nothing at all. I have hardly the patience to wait for trains.
There is so much at stake. If I could only be sure that Ray loves me as
he used to do, I would be crazy for joy! I should never leave him
again--not for anything in the world!" and she hid her face in Honor's
neck while the tears flowed.

"Not even if you come across snakes and are obliged to put up with
mosquitoes and the heat?" quizzed Honor.

"I'll face anything but the loss of my husband's love. What a fool I
have been! a blind, childish fool! Why, that affair with Captain Dalton
which I exaggerated and worried over, might have been made all right in
good time. I ought to have listened to you, and set myself to make Ray
so happy that he would have had nothing to forgive! After all, it wasn't
as if I was wilfully to blame?"

"I told you that before you went home."

"And it came to me only when I began to fear that I was losing his love!
That was a contingency I never believed possible. He was always so mad
about me, spoiling me in every way and treating me as a little queen!
Oh, Honor what a mess I have made of things!"

"Don't do anything in the heat of passion, dear," Honor advised
thoughtfully. "Remember he has had sunstroke. A man is hardly himself
for months after such an illness--sometimes for years. It affects people
differently. Some are irritable, some have clouded memories; for the
brain is the seat of the trouble."

"Are you trying to prepare me to find Ray insane?" Joyce asked with
frightened eyes.

"Not at all. He is as sane as you or I, but his impulses are not so much
under control, and his judgment is likely to err since that shock to his
brain."

"Then he is not to be held accountable for anything he has done of
late?" indignantly.

"You might take all I have said into consideration if you are required
to forgive anything he has been weak or foolish enough to have done
since his illness."

Joyce laughed bitterly. "I wonder what you would feel inclined to do in
my place?"

"Do you really wish to know?"

"I do," said Joyce as a challenge, while drying her eyes.

"The chief thing to be considered, is the future. That must be saved at
all costs. A mistake in the present, committed in ha