ation 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 and seated herself at the table. The flush caused by the
surprise of the meeting still lingered on her face, the tear-drops still
lingered in her eyes; and as George Strickland sat down opp