Mr. Denvil seems to
be quite bad with typhoid, and Theo has been galloping over half the
Frontier after outposts--such rubbishy work for a man like that!
And--oh, you'd better read it all for yourself. You needn't bother
about it having been written for _me_. It might just as well be a
paragraph out of a newspaper!"

With a childish grimace she tossed the letter across the table. But
hid in her heart lay the rankling knowledge that she had been both
hasty and unjust to her husband, who had emphasised the fact by
ignoring it,--a method peculiarly his own.

Honor read every line of the closely-written pages with eager
interest, read also the much that had not been written, that Evelyn
had failed to discern; and a great thankfulness overwhelmed her that
she had refrained from adding her own passing vexation to the burden
of work and anxiety already resting on her friend's shoulders.

Her spoken comment was brief and characteristic.

"Oh, how I envy Mrs Olliver! We're just playing at life up here, you
and I, like two dolls, while she is living the real thing down there."

Evelyn Desmond, in utter astonishment, flung annoyance to the winds.

"Really and truly, Honor," she declared, with conviction, "you are the
most amazing person I've ever known!"

CHAPTER XII.

NOW IT'S DIFFERENT.

"A word! how it severeth!
O Power of Life and Death,
In the tongue, as the preacher saith."
--BROWNING.

The great monsoon--a majestic onrush of cloud hurtling across the
heavens, with dazzle of lightning and clangour of thunder--had long
since rolled up from India's coastline to her utmost hills; bringing
new forms of torment to the patient plains; filling mountain and
valley and water-courses innumerable with the voice of melody.

On the cedar-crowned heights of Murree, dank boughs dripped and
drooped above ill-made houses, that gave free admittance to the moist
outer world; tree ferns, springing to sudden life on moss-clad trunks
and boughs, showed brilliant as emeralds on velvet. The whole earth
was quick with hidden stirrings and strivings, the whole air quick
with living sound--plash of rain-drops; evensong of birds; glad
shouting of cicadas among the branches, and the laughter of a hundred
fairy falls.

Theo Desmond drank in the cool green wonder of it all with a keenly
perceptive enjoyment; drew into his lungs deep draughts of the strong,
clean mountain air; watched