I. from the Bench of the
Supreme Court of Bengal, but he was one of those men on whom neither
years nor climate seem to take any effect, and at sixty-five his body
was as vigorous and his brain as active and clear as they had been at
thirty-five. He had married rather late, and Enid, the Helen of that
Iliad of the Wheelhouse, was his only child--and therefore naturally the
very apple of his eye and the idol of his heart.

Her engagement to Vane had seemed to both the fathers and to her mother
the most natural and the most desirable arrangement that could have been
made. Vane would take a brilliant degree, he would enter the Diplomatic
Service under the best of auspices, and when Enid had completed her
education with a couple of years on the Continent they were to be
married on her twentieth birthday. That was the promise of these two
bright young lives. What would the fulfilment be?

Sir Godfrey was, as he believed, the only one of his acquaintance in
England who knew the truth of the tragedy of his life. They had been
chums at Eton and Oxford. They had gone out to India together, Sir
Godfrey with a judicial appointment, and Sir Arthur as Political Agent
to one of the minor Independent States, both of them juniors with many
things to learn and many steps to climb before they took a really active
and responsible part in the propulsion of that huge and complicated
machine which is called the Indian Government.

The Fates had thrown them a good deal together, and they had got to know
each other well, not quickly, because men who are men need a great deal
of knowing; but as the months had grown into years, and the years into a
decade or more, they had really learnt to know each other. They had gone
home together on the same ship to marry the girls who had been waiting
for them since their troths had been plighted during their university
days. They had come back with their brides on the same ship to India;
Godfrey Raleigh had been godfather to his friend's first-born son. Three
years later, after the shadow had fallen upon his own life, he had
performed the same office for his friend's daughter, the successor of a
baby girl who had died during the Rains.

These two children were now the youth and maiden who, within the next
two or three years were to be man and wife. But after the events of the
last twelve hours or so, Sir Arthur felt that it would not be either
loyal to his old friend, or just to him and his daughter not