He almost jumped when the latch clicked behind him and Lance strolled in, faultlessly attired in the latest suit from home; a golden-brown tie and a silk handkerchief, the same shade, emerging from his breast pocket. By nature, Lance was no dandy; but Roy had not failed to note that he was apt to be scrupulously well turned out on certain occasions.

And, at sight of him, he promptly 'remembered he had forgotten' the very particular nature of to-day's occasion: the marriage of Miss Gladys Elton--step-sister of Rose--to a rising civilian some eighteen years older than his bride. It was an open secret, in the station, that the wedding was Mrs Elton's private and personal triumph, that she, not her una.s.suming daughter, was the acknowledged heroine of the day.

"Not ready yet--you unmitigated slacker?" Lance exclaimed with an impatient frown. "Buck up. Time we were moving."

"Awfully sorry. I clean forgot." Roy's tone was not conspicuously penitent.

"Tell us another! The whole Mess was talking of it at tiffin."

"I'm afraid I'd forgotten all about tiffin."

It was so patently the truth that Lance looked mollified. "You and your confounded novel! Now then--double. I don't want to be glaringly late."

Roy looked pathetic. "But I'm simply up to the eyes. The truth is, I can't be bothered. I'll turn up for the dancing at the Hall."

"And I'm to make your giddy excuses?"

"If any one happens to notice my absence, you can say something pretty----"

He was interrupted by the appearance of Barnard at the verandah door.

"Dog-cart's ready and waiting, Major. What's the hitch?"

"Sinclair's discovered he's too busy to come!"

"What--the favoured one? The fair Rose won't relish _that_ touching mark of attention. On whom she smiles, from him she expects gold, frankincense, and myrrh----"

"Drop it, Barnard," Desmond cut in imperatively; and Roy remarked almost in the same breath, "Thanks for the tip. I'll write to Bombay for the best brand of all three against another occasion."

"But this is _the_ occasion! Copy--my dear chap, copy! Anglo-India in excelsis and 'Oh 'Ell' in all her glory!"

It may be mentioned that Mrs Elton's name was Olive; that she saw soldiers as trees walking. And subalterns retaliated--strictly behind her back.

But Roy remained unmoved. "If you two are in such a fl.u.s.ter over your precious wedding, I vote you get out--and let _me_ get on."

Barnard asked nothing better. Miss Arden was his May-fly of the moment.

"Come along, Major," he cried, and vanished forthwith.

As Lance moved away, Roy remarked casually: "Be a good chap and ask Miss Arden, with my best salaams, to save me a dance or two, in case I'm late turning up!"

Lance gave him a straight look. "Not I. My pockets will be bulging with your apologies. You can get some one else to do your commissions in the other line."

Sheer astonishment silenced Roy; and Desmond, from the threshold, added more seriously, "Don't let the women here give you a swelled head, Roy.

They'll do their d.a.m.nedest between them."

When he had gone, Roy sat staring idly at the patch of sunlight outside his door. What the devil did Lance mean by it? Moods were not in his line. To make a half-joking request, and find Lance taking it seriously, wasn't in the natural order of things. And the way he jumped on Barnard, too. Could there possibly have been a rebuff in that quarter? He couldn't picture any girl in her senses refusing Lance. Besides, they seemed on quite friendly terms. Nothing beyond that--so far as Roy could see. He would very much like to feel sure. But, for all their intimacy, he knew precisely how far one could go with Lance: and one couldn't go as far as that.

As for the remark about a swelled head, Lance must have been rotting.

_He_ wasn't troubling about women or girls--except for tennis and dancing; and Miss Arden was a superlative performer; in fact, rather superlative all round. As a new experience, she seemed distinctly worth cultivating, so long as that process did not seriously hamper the novel,--that was unashamedly his first consideration, at the moment.

He loved every phase of the work; from the initial thrill of inception to the nice balance of a phrase and the very look of his favourite words. His childish love of them for their own sake still prevailed. For him, they were still live things, possessing a character and charm all their own.

And now, the house being blessedly empty, his pencil sped off again on its wild career. The men and women he had loved into life were thronging his brain. Everything else was forgotten--Lance and Miss Arden and the wedding and the afternoon dancing at the Hall....

CHAPTER II.

"Which is the more perilous, to meet the temptings of Eve, or to pique her?"--GEORGE MEREDITH.

Of course he reached the Lawrence Hall egregiously late, to find the afternoon dancing, that Lah.o.r.e prescribes three times a week, in full swing.

The lofty pillared Hall--an aristocrat among Station Clubs--was more crowded than usual. Half the polished floor was uncovered; the rest carpeted and furnished, for lookers-on. Here Mrs Elton still diffused her exuberant air of patronage; sailing majestically from group to group of her recent guests, and looking more than life size in lavender satin besprinkled with old lace.

Roy hurried past, lest she discover him; and, from the security of an arched alcove, scanned the more interesting half of the Hall. There went little Mrs Hunter-Ranyard, a fluffy p.u.s.s.y-cat person, with soft eyes and soft manners--and claws. She was one of those disconnected wives whom he was beginning to recognise as a feature of the country: un.o.btrusively owned by a dyspeptic-looking Divisional Judge; hospitable and lively, and an infallible authority on other people's private affairs. Like too many modern Anglo-Indians, she prided herself on keeping airily apart from the country of her exile. Natives gave her 'the creeps.' Useless to argue. Her retort was unvarying and unanswerable. "East is East--and I'm _not_. It's a country of horrors, under a thin layer of tinsel. Don't talk to _me_----!" Lance Desmond had achieved fame among the subalterns by christening her the Banter-Wrangle; but he liked her well enough, on the whole, to hope she would never find him out.

She whirled past now, on the arm of Talbot Hayes, senior a.s.sistant Commissioner; an exceedingly superior person who shared her views about 'the country.' Catching Roy's eye, she feigned exaggerated surprise and fluttered a friendly hand.

His response was automatic. He had just discovered Miss Arden--with Lance, of course--looking supreme in a moon-coloured gown with a dull gold sash carelessly knotted on one side. Her graceful hat was of gold tissue, unadorned. Near the edge of the brim lay one yellow rose; and a rope of amber beads hung well below her waist.

Roy--son of Lilamani--had an artist's eye for details of dress, for harmony of tone and line, which this girl probably achieved by mere feminine instinct. The fool he was, to have come so late. When they stopped, he would catch her and plead for an extra, at least.

Meantime, a pity to waste this one; and there was poor little Miss Delawny sitting out, as usual, in her skimpy pink frock and black hat, trying so hard not to look forlorn that he felt sorry for her. She was tacitly barred by most of the men because she was 'cafe au lait';--a delicate allusion to the precise amount of Indian blood in her veins.

He had not, so far, come across many specimens of these pathetic half-and-halfs, who seemed to inhabit a racial No-Man's-Land. But Lah.o.r.e was full of them; minor officials in the Railway and the Post Office; living, more or less, in a substratum of their own kind. He gathered that they were regarded as a 'problem' by the thoughtful few, and simply turned down by the rest. He felt an acute sympathy for them: also--in hidden depths--a vague distaste. Most of those he had encountered were so obviously of no particular caste, in either country's estimate of the word, that he had never a.s.sociated them with himself. He saw himself, rather, as of double caste; a fusion of the best in both races. The writer of that wonderful letter had said he was different; and presumably she knew. Whether the average Anglo-Indian would see any difference, he had not the remotest idea; and, so far, he had scarcely given the matter a thought.

Here, however, it was thrust upon his attention; nor had he failed to notice that Lance never mentioned the Jaipur cousins except when they were alone:--whether by chance or design, he did not choose to ask. And if either of the other fellows had noticed his mother's photograph, or felt a glimmer of curiosity, no word had been said.

After all, what concern was it of these chance-met folk? He was nothing to them; and to him they were mainly a pleasant change from the absorbing business of his novel and the problems of India in transition.

And the poor little girl in the skimpy frock was an unconscious fragment of that problem. Too pathetic to see how she tried not to look round hopefully whenever masculine footsteps came her way. Why shouldn't he give her a pleasant surprise?

She succeeded, this time, in not looking round; so the surprise came off to his satisfaction. She was nervous and unpractised, and he constantly found her feet where they had no business to be. But sooner than hurt her feelings, he piloted her twice round the room before stopping; and found himself next to Mrs Hunter-Ranyard, who 'snuggled up' to him (the phrase was Barnard's) and proffered consolation after her kind.

"Bad boy! You missed the cream of the afternoon, but you're not _quite_ too late. I'm free for the next."

Roy, fairly cornered, could only bow and smile his acceptance. And after his arduous prelude, Mrs Ranyard's dancing was an effortless delight--if only she would not spoil it by her unceasing ripple of talk. His lack of response troubled her no whit. She was bubbling over with caustic comment on Mrs Elton's latest adventure in matrimony.

"She's a mighty hunter, before the Lord! She marked down poor Hilton last cold weather," cooed the silken voice in Roy's inattentive ear. "Of course you know he's one of our coming men! And I've a shrewd idea he _was_ intended for Rose. But in Miss Rose the matchmaker has met her match! She's clever--that girl; and she's reduced the tactics of non-resistance to a fine art. I don't believe she ever stands up to her mother. She smiles and smiles--and goes her own way. She likes playing with soldiers; partly because they're good company; partly, I'll swear, because she knows it keeps her mother on tenter-hooks. But when it comes to business, she'll choose as shrewdly----"

Roy stopped dancing and confronted her, half laughing, half irate. "If you're keen on talking--let's talk. I can't do both." He stated the fact politely, but with decision. "And--frankly, I hate hearing a girl pulled to pieces, just because she's charming and good-looking and----"

"Oh, my _dear_ boy," she interrupted unfailingly--sweet solicitude in her lifted gaze. "_Did_ I trample on your chivalrous toes? Or is it----?"

"No, it _isn't_." He resented the barefaced implication. "Naturally--I admire her----"

"Oh, naturally! You can't help yourselves, any of you! She's 'sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad.' No use looking daggers! It's a fact. I don't say she flirts outrageously--like I do! She simply expects homage--and gets it. She expects men to fall in love with her--and they topple over like ninepins. Sometimes--when I'm feeling magnanimous--I catch a ninepin as it falls! Look at her now, with that R.E. boy--plainly in the toils!"

Roy declined to look. If she was trying to put him off Miss Arden, she was on the wrong tack. Besides--he wanted to dance.