e of Stella Derrick again; and then it was only in a portrait.
He came upon it too in a most unlikely place. About five o'clock
upon that afternoon he drove out of the town of Bombay up to one of the
great houses on Malabar Hill and asked for Mrs. Carruthers. He was shown
into a drawing-room which looked over Back Bay to the great buildings of
the city, and in a moment Mrs. Carruthers came to him with her hands
outstretched.

"So you've won. My husband telephoned to me. We do thank you! Victory
means so much to us."

The Carruthers were a young couple who, the moment after they had
inherited the larger share in the great firm of Templeton & Carruthers,
Bombay merchants, had found themselves involved in a partnership
suit due to one or two careless phrases in a solicitor's letter. The case
had been the great case of the year in Bombay. The issue had been
doubtful, the stake enormous and Thresk, who three years before had taken
silk, had been fetched by young Carruthers from England to fight it.

"Yes, we've won," he said. "Judgment was given in our favor this
afternoon."

"You are dining with us to-night, aren't you."

"Thank you, yes," said Thresk. "At half-past eight."

"Yes."

Mrs. Carruthers gave him some tea and chattered pleasantly while he drank
it. She was fair-haired and pretty, a lady of enthusiasms and uplifted
hands, quite without observation or knowledge, yet with power to
astonish. For every now and then some little shrewd wise saying would
gleam out of the placid flow of her trivialities and make whoever heard
it wonder for a moment whether it was her own or whether she had heard it
from another. But it was her own. For she gave no special importance to
it as she would have done had it been a remark she had thought worth
remembering. She just uttered it and slipped on, noticing no difference
in value between what she now said and what she had said a second ago. To
her the whole world was a marvel and all things in it equally amazing.
Besides she had no memory.

"I suppose that now you are free," she said, "you will go up into the
central Provinces and see something of India."

"But I am not free," replied Thresk. "I must get immediately back to
England."

"So soon!" exclaimed Mrs. Carruthers. "Now isn't that a pity! You ought
to see the Taj--oh, you really ought!--by moonlight or in the morning. I
don't know which is best, and the Ridge too!--the Ridge at Delhi. You
really mustn't leave India