r, as her husband the Resident was the
Viceroy's representative, she could claim precedence over the wife of a
mere regimental commandant. No English village is so full of petty
squabbles and malicious gossip as a small Indian station.

Like everyone else in the land Wargrave hated most those terrible hours
of the hot weather between nine in the morning and five in the
afternoon. He and Raymond passed them, like so many thousands of their
kind elsewhere, shut up in their comfortless bungalow, which was
darkened and closely shuttered to exclude the awful heat and the
blinding glare outside. Too hot to read or write, almost to smoke, they
lay in long cane chairs, gasping and perspiring freely, while the
whining _punkah_ overhead barely stirred the heated air. One exterior
window on the windward side of the bungalow was filled with a thick mat
of dried and odorous _kuskus_ grass, against which every quarter of an
hour the _bheestie_ threw water to wet it thoroughly so that the hot
breeze that swept over the burning sand outside might enter cooled by
the evaporation of the water.

But Frank found alleviation and comfort in frequent visits to the
Residency, where Mrs. Norton and he spent the baking hours of the
afternoon absorbed in making music or singing duets. For Violet had a
well-trained voice which harmonised well with his. No thought of sex
seemed to obtrude itself on them. They were just playmates, comrades,
nothing more.

Yet it was only natural that the woman's vanity should be flattered by
the man's eagerness to seek her society and by his evident pleasure in
it. And it was delightful to have at last a sympathetic listener to all
her little grievances, one who seemed as interested in her petty
household worries or the delinquencies of her London milliner in failing
to execute her orders properly as in her greater complaint against the
fate that condemned a woman of her artistic and gaiety-loving nature to
existence in the wilds and to the society of persons so uncongenial to
her as were the majority of the white folk of Rohar.

To a man the role of confidant to a pretty woman is pleasant and
flattering; and Wargrave felt that he was highly favoured by being made
the recipient of her confidences. It never occurred to him that there
might be danger in the situation. He regarded her only as a friend in
need of sympathy and help. His chivalry was up in arms at the thought
that she was not properly appreciated by h