life was broken and ended.

"You're a dark horse, you blighter," he was chaffed. "Keeping it up your
sleeve all this time that your wife was on her way out!"

"Introduce me, old son," said the _aide-de-camp_ to the Governor. "Mrs.
Meredith dances divinely."

"Let me congratulate you, Meredith," said the Governor, in his
friendliest manner. "Your wife is the most charming little woman I have
met for some time. I have quite lost my heart to her!" He patted Ray's
shoulder to impress the fact on "this foolish fellow" who had scarcely
"played the game" in his lovely little lady's absence. "It was a damned
shame!"

Joyce was unquestionably the "belle of the ball"; there were no two
opinions about that. Few remembered that she had been at Darjeeling the
previous season, since she had kept to her hotel as a semi-invalid with
a very young child; so that she had the additional advantage of being
fresh. India loves new sensations and is grateful to those who supply
them, gratis.

Men surrounded her and paid her marked attentions, fought with each
other, good-naturedly, for portions of dances, and served her as a
princess at the suppers. Yet, in spite of her bewildering success, she
never forgot the object that had taken her there, and was more than
repaid. Her manner to her husband was faultless, and it kept him
regardful of her slightest wish. Her mission was to charm all, her
husband in particular, so that Mrs. Dalton's humiliation should be
complete; and before midnight, victory was achieved. Mrs. Dalton ordered
her 'rickshaw at the stroke of twelve, and retired from the ball, her
almost empty programme in pieces on the floor. She had been overlooked
by men, cut by women, and obliged to look on, with a raging heart, at
Mrs. Meredith's triumph. Ray Meredith, with the rudeness of utter
contempt, had left her absolutely alone. The cruelty of his behaviour
had been insupportable. When, on one occasion, she had seized the chance
of a word with him, he was deaf to her exhortations, and she was shaken
off with a contemptuous disregard for her feelings.

When she left the building, it was to suffer the tortures of a woman
scorned. She was learning to swallow that bitterest of all pills, the
knowledge that she was utterly despised by the man for whom she had been
willing to lower her womanhood in the dust.

She had come to the realisation of the fact that the woman who lowers
herself in the eyes of men, will inevitably find hers