one you all!" she cried gaily back at them as she passed
down the steps; and in the relief of the general exclamation it seemed
reasonable enough that Stephen Arnold should lean into the gharry to see
that she was quite comfortable. The unusual thing, which nobody else
heard, was that he said to her then with shamed discomfort, "It doesn't
matter--it doesn't matter," and that Hilda, driving away, found herself
without a voice to answer the good-nights they chorussed after her.

Arnold begged a seat in Captain Corby's dog-cart, and Hilda, with her
purple train in her lap, heard the wheels following all the way. She
re-encountered the lady to whom she had been entrusted, whose name it
occurs to me was Winstick, in the cloak-room. They were late; there was
hardly anybody else but the attendants; and Mrs. Winstick smiled freely
and said she loved the colour of Hilda's dress; also that she would give
worlds for an invisible hair-pin--oh, thank you!--and that it was simply
ducky of her Excellency to have pink powder as well as white put out.
She did hope Miss Howe would enjoy the evening--they would meet again
later on; she must not forget to look at the chunam pillars in the
ball-room--perfectly lovely. So she vanished; but Hilda went with
certainty into the corridor to find Arnold pacing up and down the red
strip of carpet, with his hands clasped behind him and his head thrust
forward, waiting for her.

They dropped together into the crowd and walked among well-dressed
woman, men in civilian black and men in uniform, up and down the
pillared spaces of the ball-room. People had not been asked to dance,
and they seemed to walk about chiefly for observation. There was, of
course, the opportunity of talking and of listening to the band which
discoursed in a corner behind palms, but the distraction which is the
social Nemesis of bureaucracy was in the air, visibly increasing in the
neighbourhoods of the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief, and made the
commonplaces people uttered to each other disjointed and fragmentary,
while it was plain that few were aware whether music was being rendered
or not. Anyone sensitive to pervading mental currents in gatherings of
this sort would have found the relief of concentration and directness
only near the buffet that ran along one side of the room, where the
natural instinct played, without impediment, upon soup and sandwiches.

They did not look much at Hilda, even on the arm of her liveri