sounding the second mess-call as the Resident's carriage
drew up before the steps of the Mess verandah on which stood all the
officers of the regiment, dressed in the white drill uniform worn at
dinner in India during the hot weather. From the carriage Major Norton,
a stout, middle-aged man in civilian evening dress, descended stiffly
and shook hands with the Commandant of the battalion, Colonel Trevor,
who had come down the steps to meet him and whose guest he was to be.

On the verandah Wargrave was introduced to him by the Colonel and took
his outstretched hand with reluctance; for Frank felt stirring in him a
faint jealousy of the man who was Violet's legal lord and an indefinite
hostility to him for not appreciating his charming wife as he ought. And
while the Resident was shaking hands with the others Wargrave looked at
him with interest.

Major Norton was a very ordinary-looking man, more elderly in appearance
than his years warranted. He was bald and clean-shaved but for scraps of
side-whiskers that gave him a resemblance to the traditional
stage-lawyer of amateur theatricals, a likeness increased by his heavy
and prosy manner. It was hard to believe that he had ever been a young
subaltern, though such had once been the case, for the Indian Political
Department is recruited chiefly from officers of the Indian Army. But he
was never the gay and light-hearted individual that most junior subs.
are at the beginning of their career. Even then he had been a sober and
serious individual, favourably noted by his superiors as being earnest
and painstaking. And now he was well thought of by the Heads of his
Department; for his plodding and methodical disposition and his slavish
adherence to rules and regulations had earned him the reputation of
being an eminently "safe" man. How such a gay, laughter-loving,
coquettish and attractive woman as Violet Dering came to marry one so
entirely her opposite puzzled everyone who did not know the inner
history of a girl, one of a large family of daughters, given "her chance
in life" by being sent out to relatives in Calcutta for one season, with
a definite warning not to return home unmarried under penalty of being
turned out to face the world as a governess or hospital nurse. And
Violet liked comfort and hated work.

During dinner Wargrave found himself instinctively criticising Norton's
manner and conversation, and rapidly arrived at the conclusion that
Raymond had described him