khansamah, or things in the newspapers. Alicia, once, at a suggestive
point, put almost a visible question into a silent glance, and Lindsay
asked her for some more sugar. Surgeon-Major Livingstone, coming into
his office, unexpectedly one morning, found his sister in the act of
replacing a volume upon its professional shelf. It was somebody on the
pathology of Indian fevers. Hilda's theory lacked so little to approve
it--only technical corroboration. It might also be considered that,
although Laura had expressly received the freedom of the city for
intercessional or any other purpose, she did not come again. They may
have heard in Crooked Lane that Duff was better. We may freely
imagine that Mrs. Sand was informed; it looked as if the respite to
disinterested anxiety afforded by his recovery had been taken advantage
of. Lindsay was to be given time for more dignified repentance; they
might now very well hand him over, Alicia thought, smiling, to the
Archdeacon.

As a test, as something to reckon by, the revelation to Lindsay still
in prospect, of the single visit Captain Filbert did make, was perhaps
lacking in essentials. It would be an experiment of some intricacy, it
might very probably work out in shades. So much would infallibly have to
be put down for surprise and so much reasonably for displeasure, without
any prejudice to the green hope budding underneath; the key to Hilda's
theory might very well be lost in contingencies. Nevertheless, Alicia
postponed her story, from day to day and from hour to hour. If her
ideas about it--she kept them carefully in solution--could have been
precipitated, they might have appeared in a formula favourite with her
brother the Surgeon-Major, who often talked of giving nature a chance.

She told him finally on the morning of his first drive. They went
together and alone, Alicia taking her brother's place in the carriage
at a demand for him from the hospital. It was seven o'clock, and the
morning wind swept soft and warm from over the river. There was a white
light on all the stucco parapets, and their shadows slanted clear and
delicately purple to the west. The dust slept on the broad roads of the
Maidan, only a curling trace lifted itself here and there at the heel
of a cart-bullock, and nothing had risen yet of the lazy tumult of the
streets that knotted themselves in the city. From the river, curving
past the statue of an Indian administrator, came a string of country
people w