and showed
just such shapely, silken-clad legs and ankles and such small feet in
dainty, silver-buckled, high-heeled shoes. And he thought with an inward
groan that such a luxury was not for a debt-ridden subaltern like him,
that his heavily-mortgaged pay would not run to expensive gowns, silk
stockings and costly footwear.

Yet it never occurred to him that Violet cared for him nor did it enter
his mind to try to win her love. But he felt that he would do much to
make her happy, that saving her life made him in a way responsible for
it in future; and he knew that she was not a contented woman. His
sympathy went out to her for what he guessed she must suffer from her
ill-assorted union.

But soon he had no need to surmise it; for before long Violet began to
confide all her sorrows to him and the recital made his heart bleed for
one so young and beautiful mated to a selfish wretch who was as blind to
her suffering as he was to her charm. The younger man's chivalry was up
in arms, and he felt that such a boor did not deserve so bright a jewel.
At times Frank was tempted to confront the callous husband and force him
to open his dulled eyes to the bravely-borne misery of his neglected
wife and realise how fortunate he ought to consider himself in being the
owner of such a transcendent being. But the next moment the infatuated
youth was convinced that Norton was incapable of appreciating so rare a
woman, that only a nature like his own could understand or do full
justice to the perfections of hers. Such is a young man's conceit. He
rejoiced to know that his poor sympathy could help in a measure to make
up to Violet for the happiness that she declared that she had missed in
life. And so he gladly consented to play the consoler; and she, for the
pleasure of being consoled, continued to pour out her griefs to him.

But if Frank was unconscious of the danger of his post as sympathising
confidant to another man's young and pretty wife, others were not. Her
husband, of course, was as blind as most husbands seem to be in
Anglo-Indian society. For in that land of the Household of Three, the
Eternal Triangle, it is almost a recognised principle that every married
woman who is at all attractive is entitled to have one particular
bachelor always in close attendance on her, to be constantly at her beck
and call, to ride with her, to drive her every afternoon to tennis or
golf or watch polo, then on to the Club and sit with her there.