t.
But I want you to come with me, Vi. And, what's more, I mean to have
you."

"But your father wishes you to stay in the Service. You told me so
yourself. Will he like it if you leave--and will he continue your
allowance?"

"Oh, I'll get round him. He's only got me. He's no one else to leave his
money to. It'd be all right, Vi. Answer me. I mean to get you."

He grasped her wrist and tried to drag her towards him. She laughed and
held him off.

"Take care, my dear boy. Darkness has ears. We're not alone in the
garden, please remember. If you can't behave prettily I'm going back to
the ballroom. Come, there's the music beginning again."

He tried to seize her in his arms, but she eluded his grasp with a
dexterity that argued practice, and, rising, moved across the grass. He
followed sulkily, dominated by her cool and careless indifference. When
they reached the verandah one of the Government House aides-de-camp
rushed up to her.

"Oh, Mrs. Norton, I've been hunting for you everywhere. I've a message
from His Excellency. He wants you to come to his table at supper and
save him from the Members of Council's awful wives."

"Oh, thanks, Captain Gardner, I'll come with pleasure," she answered,
smiling prettily on him. An A.D.C. is always worth cultivating.

"I say, is it hopeless asking you for a dance now?" he said. "We poor
devils of the Staff don't get a chance at the beginning of the evening,
as we're so busy introducing people to Their Excellencies."

She looked at her programme.

"You can have this, if you like. It's only with some Indian Civilian in
spectacles; and I hate the Heaven Born. They're such bores." She smiled
and sailed off on the A.D.C.'s arm to the disgust of Rosenthal, calmly
abandoned. But he could not help being amused when a round-faced young
man dressed as an ancient Greek with gig-lamp spectacles rushed up to
overtake Mrs. Norton before she entered the ballroom, and stopped in
dismay to gaze after her open-mouthed and peer at his programme.

But the Hussar drove her back from Government House to Poona in his
particularly luxurious Rolls-Royce with an English chauffeur and would
hardly let her go when the car drew up before the door of the Munster
Hotel where she was staying. Laughing, crushed and dishevelled, she
broke from him and jumped out of the automobile, ran up the verandah
steps and turned to wave to him as the chauffeur started off to take him
to his quarters in the Club of We