is the best dancer in Rajpore.'
There was a pause, before he said quietly, 'Why not be quite frank, Gwen, and say he is in love with you still? Surely that is palpable.'
'Perhaps. But I prefer to leave such questions alone, even with my cousin. Especially since that cousin has done me the honour of telling me many times that he is devoted to me himself.'
He smiled at her deft evasion.
'What is the use of any one being devoted to you, Gwen, if you are going to marry Colonel Tweedie?' he replied half jestingly.
'I did not know I was going to marry him; but I am certainly going to look after Miss Rose Tweedie in camp--if she will have me. Do you think I shall want a new riding-habit, Mr. Gordon?'
'I really cannot help you on that question, Mrs. Boynton.'
She leant towards him, so that he could see the laugh pass from her pretty eyes. 'Don't be foolish, Lewis. You have been too good and kind to me for that. You, who know my affairs as well as I know them myself, must see that I have scarcely any choice between marrying again, and going home to live with my mother-in-law, or starving in some horrid poky lodging. How I should hate either! I can't live without money, Lewis. I don't spend much--but it goes somehow. Then my pension as a civilian's widow is but genteel poverty. Clothes are so expensive to begin with; yet even your best friends don't care for you unless you are well dressed.'
The real regret in her tone made him quote a trite saying about beauty unadorned.
'Rubbish!' she interrupted, sinking into her cushions again. 'Beauty is like the blue teapot; you must live up to it. I must marry some one who can afford a well-dressed wife. I must indeed, in common honesty to my future creditors. Personally I should prefer it to the mother-in-law. Besides, if I went home I should never see you again, Lewis. I should not like that--would you?'
If the words in themselves were a direct challenge, they came from the shadow where she sat, so daintily, so airily, that half a dozen replies were possible without trenching on sober affirmation or denial. Yet her hearer hesitated. There must always be a time when a man settles whether or no he shall ask a certain woman to be his wife, and this was not the first time the idea of marrying his cousin had occurred to Lewis Gordon. He was not the head of a Department, but he was in a fair way to become one in the future. He had money of his own, and she liked him in a way. As for her? she was perfection as a companion. As a wife?----
'My dear Gwen! I should hate it,' he said fervently, being certain of so much. But when he had said the words, they sounded too little, or too much, so he took refuge in jest again. 'Faute de mieux I should prefer the family party; that is to say, if you could induce your future stepdaughter, Miss Rose, to bear with my presence.'
The light on the bronze slipper shifted, showing an impatient movement of the pretty foot.
'Impossible, I should say,' came the voice, airy as ever; 'but as you seem to be imitating the barber's fifth brother to-night, why not settle that she should marry? Girls do, sometimes, especially in India.'
As she spoke a couple swooped out into the almost empty circle of polished floor. The waltz, nearing its end, gave them a swinging measure, and those two were dancers indeed. One could not choose but look, until, as the last chord crashed, they stopped as if petrified, to smile at each other, before hurrying away. Lewis Gordon watched them, his hands on his knees, a cynical smile on his face.
'By all means!' he said languidly. 'Suppose we say Dan Fitzgerald, and so get rid of our two bêtes-noir at once.'
Mrs. Boynton started from her cushions and gathered her boa together.
'What nonsense we are talking! Stupid nonsense into the bargain--which is intolerable. I am ashamed of myself. Come! let us have some coffee and forget our folly.'
Her companion rose to accompany her with a shrug of his shoulders. I beg your pardon, even though I fail to see the enormity of my offence. Fitzgerald, if he were once settled----'
She interrupted him with a gay laugh. 'So you aspire to the barber's office in other ways; would like to ranger your friends. When I am duly installed as chaperon I must consult you on matrimonial questions; but not till then, if you please, Lewis. Ah! there is Mrs. Dacre, I haven't seen her for an age; not since I went to Meerut.'
He took his dismissal placidly, as men do in a society where they cannot claim the undivided attention of at least one woman. Besides, Gwen Boynton's chief charm lay in the impossibility of forgetting that--provided she did not wish to do something else--she would be quite as gracious to the person who cut into your place as she had been to you. Furthermore that he was sure to hold as good a hand, and know the game as well as you did; for Mrs. Boynton, as Rose Tweedie had remarked, admitted no inferior players to her table. Seen now in the full light of the coffee-room she showed slight and graceful in the soft grey draperies which she wore as half mourning for the late Mr. Boynton--a perfectly unexceptional man who, on the verge of retirement, had lost all the savings of a long bachelorhood in one unfortunate venture, and had died of the disappointment. Beyond a perfectly lovely mouth and the faultless curves of chin and throat, there was nothing remarkable in her face; nothing at least to account for her remarkable charm. That, however, was indubitable; even Lewis Gordon, sipping his coffee outside the circle which gathered round her quickly, kept his eyes upon her. So he noticed hers turn more than once to Dan Fitzgerald, who stood at the table waiting to replace Rose Tweedie's tumbler of lemonade. 'She is afraid of him,' he thought. 'I wonder why? Perhaps she hasn't got over her fancy either; that is the only thing I can think of likely to create a difficulty.' Then he went off to button-hole another Secretary about business, and forgot even Gwen Boynton.
Yet, if half an hour afterwards he had by chance wandered into that portion of the gardens devoted to zoology he would have seen something to confirm his suggestion. For the two figures leaning over the iron rail surrounding the ornamental water were those of Mrs. Boynton and Dan Fitzgerald. The moon shone on the water; the clumps of bamboo and plantains on the central island showed softly dark; masses of feathery tamarisk trees and the sweeping curves of a sandhill or two beyond the garden shut out the world. Otherwise it was not a suitable spot for sentimental interviews, by reason of the ducks and geese, whose sleepy gabblings and quackings were apt to come in unsympathetic chorus to lovers' talk, while the adjutants, standing in pairs side by side, their heads under their wings, were over-suggestive of Darby and Joan. The conversation between these two, however, was sufficiently sensible to stand the test of their surroundings.
'It is really absurd,' she said in (for her) quite a querulous voice. 'I accept a pleasant invitation to make myself useful to the Tweedies, who have always been most kind to me,--and my cousin. And why every one should jump to the conclusion that I am going to marry a man who is almost old enough to be my father I cannot imagine. Really the world is too idiotic.'
'You don't lump me in as the world, do you, Gwen?' he answered in a lower tone. 'Surely you make a difference--surely there's some excuse for me, dear? I haven't seen you for six weeks, Gwen; you've been away, remember. And I hurried so for that promised dance, which you forgot. Yes; we'll say you forgot it. Then every one is talking of your going into camp with the Tweedies, wondering at your giving up the pleasures, the society, hinting at some reason----'
'If you can't trust me, Dan, that is an end of everything,' she interrupted sharply. 'No, don't!--please, don't! One never knows who mayn't come this way. Do let us be reasonable, Dan. We are not boy and girl now, to squabble and make it up again. You tell me always that I love you--have always loved you--will never love any one else; and perhaps you are right. Isn't that confidence enough for you?' She tried her utmost to keep an even tone, but something made
