And he went his way in such elation of spirits as a captain may justly feel whose team has carried off the Punjab Cup in the face of overwhelming odds.

CHAPTER XVI.

SIGNED AND SEALED.

"Leave the dead moments to bury their dead; Let us kiss, and break the spell."

--OWEN MEREDITH.

The Fancy Ball, given on Old Year's night by the Punjab Commission, was, in Evelyn's eyes, the supreme event of the week; and when Desmond, after a mad gallop from the Bengal Cavalry Mess, threw open his bedroom door, he was arrested by a vision altogether unexpected, and altogether satisfying to his fastidious taste.

A transformed Evelyn stood before the long gla.s.s, wrapt in happy contemplation of her own image. From the fillet across her forehead, with its tremulous wire antennae, to the sandalled slipper that showed beneath her silken draperies, all was gold. Two shimmering wings of gauze sprang from her shoulders; her hair, glittering with gold dust, waved to her waist; and a single row of topaz gleamed on the pearl tint of her throat like drops of wine.

"By Jove, Ladybird,--how lovely you look!"

She started, and turned upon him a face of radiance.

"I'm the Golden b.u.t.terfly. Do you like me, Theo, really?"

"I do;--no question. Where on earth did you get it all?"

"At Simla, last year. Muriel Walter invented it for me." Her colour deepened, and she lowered her eyes. "I didn't show it to you before,--because----"

"Yes, yes,--I know what you mean. Don't distress yourself over that.

You'll have _your_ triumph to-night, Ladybird! Remember my dances, please, when you're besieged by the other fellows! Upon my word, you look such a perfect b.u.t.terfly that I shall hardly dare lay a hand on you!"

"You may dare, though," she said softly. "I won't break in pieces if you do."

Shy invitation lurked in her look and tone; but apparently her husband failed to perceive it.

"I'll put you to the test later on," he said, with an amused laugh. "I must go now, and translate myself into Charles Surface, or I'll be late."

Left alone again, she turned back to her looking-gla.s.s and sighed; but a single glance at it comforted her surprisingly.

"He was in a hurry," she reflected, by way of further consolation, "and I've got four dances with him after all."

Theo Desmond inscribed few names on his programme beyond those of his wife, Mrs Olliver, and Honor Meredith.

"You must let me have a good few dances, Honor," he said to her, "and hang Mrs Grundy! We are outsiders here, and you and I understand one another."

She surrendered her programme with smiling submission. "Do you always order people to give you dances in that imperative fashion?"

"Only when I'm set on having them, and daren't risk refusal! I'll go one better than Paul, if I may. I didn't know he had it in him to be so grasping."

And he returned the card on which the initials P. W. appeared four times in Wyndham's neat handwriting.

Never, in all his days had Paul asked a woman to give him four dances; and as he claimed Honor for the first of them, he wondered whether his new-found boldness would carry him farther still. Her beauty and graciousness, her enthusiasm over the afternoon's triumph, exalted him from the sober levels of patience and modesty to unscaled heights of aspiration. But not until their second valse together did an opening for speech present itself.

They had deserted the packed moving ma.s.s, in whose midst dancing was little more than a promenade under difficulties, and stood aside in an alcove that opened off the ballroom.

"Look at Evelyn. Isn't she charming in that dress?" Honor exclaimed, as the Golden b.u.t.terfly whirled past, like an incarnate sunbeam, in her husband's arms. "I feel a Methuselah when I see how freshly and rapturously she is enjoying it all. This is my seventh Commission Ball, Major Wyndham! No doubt most people think it high time I hid my diminished head in England. But my head refuses to feel diminished,"--she lifted it a little in speaking,--"and I prefer to remain where I am."

"On the Border?"

"Yes. On the Border for choice."

"You were keen to get there, I remember," he said, restraining his eagerness. "And you are not disappointed, after nine months of it?"

"Disappointed?--I think they have been almost the best months of my life."

She spoke with sudden fervour, looking straight before her into the brilliant, shifting crowd.

Paul's pulses quickened. He saw possibilities ahead.

"Do you mean----? Would you be content to live there--for good?"

His tone caught her attention, and she turned to him with disconcerting directness of gaze.

"Yes," she said quietly, "I would be quite content to live on the Frontier--with John, if only he would have me. Now we might surely go on dancing, Major Wyndham."

Paul put his arm about her in silence. His time had not yet come; and he took up his burden of waiting again, if with less hope, yet with undiminished resolve.

Honor, meanwhile, had leisure to wonder whether she had imagined that new note in his voice. If not,--and if he were to repeat the question in a more definite form--how should she answer him?

In truth she could not tell. Sincere admiration is not always easy to distinguish from love of a certain order. But Paul's bearing through the remainder of the dance convinced her that she must have been mistaken, and she dismissed the subject from her mind.

Leaving her in charge of Desmond, Wyndham slipped on his greatcoat, and spent half an hour pacing to and fro, in the frosty darkness, spangled with keen stars. Here, forgetful of expectant partners, he took counsel with his cigar and his own sadly sobered heart. More than once he asked himself why those months on the Frontier had been among the best in Honor Meredith's life. The fervour of her tone haunted him with uncomfortable persistence; yet, had he put the question to her, it is doubtful whether she could have given him a definite answer, even if she would.

But although the lights and music and laughter had lost their meaning for him, the great ball of the year went forward merrily in regular alternations of sound and silence, of motion and quiescence, to its appointed end.

It was during one of the intervals, when eye and ear enjoyed a pa.s.sing respite from the whirling wheel of things, that Desmond, coming out of the cardroom--where he had been enjoying a rubber and a cigarette--caught sight of a gleaming figure standing alone in the pillared entrance to the Hall, and hurried across the deserted ballroom. His wife looked pathetically small and unprotected in the wide emptiness of the archway, and the corners of her mouth quivered as though tears were not far off.

"Oh, Theo,--I _am_ glad!" she said as he reached her side. "I wanted you--long ago, but I couldn't find you anywhere in the crowd."

"What's the trouble, little woman?" he asked. "Quite surprising to see you unappropriated. Any one been bothering you?"

"Yes--a man. One of the stewards introduced him----"

The ready fire flashed in his eyes.

"Confound him! Where is he? What did he do?"

"Nothing--very much. Only--I didn't like it. Come and sit down somewhere and I'll tell you."