nto a large and well-furnished drawing-room
extending along the whole front of the building. Here Wargrave found
Mrs. Norton awaiting him. She looked very lovely in a cool white dress
of muslin--but muslin shaped by a master-hand of Paris. She welcomed him
gaily and made him feel at once on the footing of an old friend.

She was genuinely glad to see him again. To this young and attractive
woman, full of the joy of living, hardly more than a girl, yet married
to a much older man, sober-minded, stolid and uncongenial to her, and
buried in this dull and lonely station, Wargrave had appealed instantly.
Youth calls to youth, and she hailed his advent into her monotonous life
as a child greets the coming of a playfellow. With the other two ladies
in Rohar she had nothing in common. Both were middle-aged, serious and
spiteful. To them her youth and beauty were an offence; and from the
first day of their acquaintance with her they had disliked her. As for
the other officers of the regiment none of them attracted her; for, good
fellows as they were, none shared any of her tastes except her love of
sport. But in Wargrave she had already recognised a companion, a
playmate, one to whom music, art and poetry appealed as they did to her.

On his side Frank, heart-whole but fond of the society of the opposite
sex, was at once attracted by this charming member of it who had tastes
akin to his own. Her beauty pleased his beauty-loving eye; and he would
not have been man if her readiness to meet him on a footing of
friendship had not flattered him. He had thought that a great drawback
to life in Rohar would be the lack of feminine companionship; for the
ladies of his regiment were not at all congenial, although he did not
dislike them. But it was delightful to find in this desert spot this
pretty and cultured woman, who would have been deemed attractive in
London and who appeared trebly so in a dull and lonely Indian station.
He had thought much of her since their meeting on the previous day; and
although it never occurred to him to lose his heart to her or even
attempt to flirt with her, yet he felt that her friendship would
brighten existence for him in Rohar. Nor did the thought strike him
that possibly he might come to mean more to Mrs. Norton than she to him.
For, while he had his work, his duties, the goodfellowship of the Mess
and the friendship of his comrades to fill his life, she had nothing.
She was utterly without interests,