came, by many passages and flights of stairs, back to the smoking-room, where Ducie's bandage was removed. One last pipe, a little desultory conversation, and then bed.
M. Platzoff being out of the way for an hour or two next afternoon, Captain Ducie contrived to pay a surreptitious visit to his host's private study. On the carpet he found one of the two paper pellets which he had dropped from his fingers the previous evening. There, too, was the same faint, sickly smell that had filled his nostrils when the handkerchief was over his eyes, which he now traced to a huge china jar in one corner, filled with the dried leaves of flowers gathered long summers before.
CHAPTER XVI
"There he is! there is dear Major Strickland!"
The tidal train was just steaming into London Bridge station on a certain spring evening as the above words were spoken. From a window of one of the carriages a bright young face was peering eagerly, a face which lighted up with a smile of rare sweetness the moment Major Strickland's soldierly figure came into view. A tiny gloved hand was held out as a signal, the Major's eye was caught, the train came to a stand, and next moment Janet Hope was on the platform with her arms round the old soldier's neck and her lips held up for a kiss.
The publicity of this transaction seemed slightly to shock the sensibilities of Miss Close, the English teacher in whose charge Janet had come over; but she was won to a quite different view of the affair when the Major, after requesting to be introduced to her, shook her cordially by the hand, said how greatly obliged he was to her for the care she had taken of "his dear Miss Hope," and invited her to dine next day with himself and Janet. Then Miss Close went her way, and the Major and Janet went theirs in a cab to a hotel not a hundred miles from Piccadilly.
Janet's first words as they got clear of the station were:
"And now you must tell me how everybody is at Deepley Walls."
"Everybody was quite well when I left home except one person—Sister Agnes."
"Dear Sister Agnes!" said Janet, and the tears sprang to her eyes in a moment. "I am more sorry than I can tell to hear that she is ill."
"Not ill exactly, but ailing," said the Major. "You must not alarm yourself unnecessarily. She caught a severe cold one wet evening about three months ago as she was on her way home from visiting some poor sick woman in the village, and she seems never to have been quite well since."
"I had a letter from her five days ago, but she never hinted to me that she was not well."
"I can quite believe that. She is not one given to complaining about herself, but one who strives to soothe the complaints of others. The good she does in her quiet way among the poor is something wonderful. I must tell you what an old bed-ridden man, to whom she had been very kind, said to her the other day. Said he, 'If everybody had their rights in this world, ma'am, or if I was king of fairyland, you should have a pair of angel's wings, so that everybody might know how good you are.' And there are a hundred others who would say the same thing."
"If I had not had her dear letters to hearten me and cheer me up, I think that many a time I should have broken down utterly under the dreadful monotony of my life at the Pension Clissot. I had no holidays, in the common meaning of the word; no dear friends to go and see; none even to come once in a way to see me, were it only for one happy hour. I had no home recollections to which I could look back fondly in memory, and the future was all a blank—a mystery. But the letters of Sister Agnes spoke to me like the voice of a dear friend. They purified me, they lifted me out of my common work-a-day troubles and all the petty meannesses of school-girl existence, and set before me the example of a good and noble life as the one thing worth striving for in this weary world."
"Tut, tut, my dear child!" said the Major, "you are far too young to call the world a weary world. Please heaven, it shall not be quite such a dreary place for you in time to come. We will begin the change this very evening. We shall just be in time to get a bit of dinner, and then, heigh! for the play."
"The play, dear Major Strickland!" said Janet, with a sudden flush and an eager light in her eyes; "but would Sister Agnes approve of my going to such a place?"
"I scarcely think, poverina, that Sister Agnes would disapprove of any place to which I might choose to take you."
"Forgive me!" cried Janet; "I did not intend you to construe my words in that way."
"I have never construed anything since I was at school fifty years ago," answered the Major, laughingly. "Can you tell me now from your heart, little one, that you would not like to go to the play?"
"I should like very, very much to go, and after what has been said I will never forgive you if you do not take me."
"The penalty would be too severe. It is agreed that we shall go."
"To me it seems only seven days instead of seven years since I was last driven through London streets," resumed Janet, as they were crawling up Fleet Street. "The same shops, the same houses, and even, as it seems to me, the same people crowding the pathways; and, to complete the illusion, the same kind travelling companion now as then."
"To me the illusion seems by no means so complete. To London Bridge, seven years ago, I took a simple child of twelve: to-day I bring back a young lady of nineteen—a woman, in point of fact—who, I have no doubt, understands more of flirtation than she does of French, and would rather graduate in coquetry than in crochet-work."
"Take care then, sir, lest I wing my unslaked arrows at you."
"You are too late in the day, dear child, to practise on me. I am your devoted slave already—bound fast to the wheel of your triumphant car. What more would you have?"
The hotel was reached at last, and the Major gave Janet a short quarter of an hour for her toilette. When she got downstairs dinner was on the point of being served, and she found covers laid for three. Before she had time to ask a question, the third person entered the room. He was a tall, well-built man of six or seven and twenty. He had light-brown hair, closely cropped, but still inclined to curl, and a thick beard and moustache of the same colour. He had blue eyes, and a pleasant smile, and the easy, self-possessed manner of one who had seen "the world of men and things." His left sleeve was empty.
Janet did not immediately recognise him, he looked so much older, so different in every way; but at the first sound of his voice she knew who stood before her. He came forward and held out his hand—the one hand that was left him.
"May I venture to call myself an old friend, Miss Hope? And to trust that even after all these years I am not quite forgotten?"
"I recognise you by your voice, not by your face. You are Mr. George Strickland. You it was who saved my life. Whatever else I may have forgotten, I have not forgotten that."
"I am too well pleased to find that I live in your memory at all to cavil with your reason for recollecting me."
"But—but, I never heard—no one ever told me—" Then she stopped with tears in her eyes, and glanced at his empty sleeve.
"That I had left part of myself in India," he said, finishing the sentence for her. "Such, nevertheless, is the case. Uncle there says that the yellow rascals were so fond of me that they could not bear to part from me altogether. For my own part, I think myself fortunate that they did not keep me there in toto, in which case I should not have had the pleasure of meeting you here to-day."
He had been holding her hand quite an unnecessary length of time. She now withdrew it gently. Their eyes met for one brief instant, then Janet turned away
