of it," he said slowly, and Mrs. Carruthers replied
sweetly:

"But lots of people live in India, Mr. Thresk. Didn't you know that? We
are not the uttermost ends of the earth."

Thresk set to work to make his peace. He had not heard of Mrs. Ballantyne
for so long. It seemed strange to him to find himself suddenly near to
her now--that is if he was near. He just avoided that other exasperating
trick of treating India as if it was a provincial town and all its
inhabitants neighbours. But he only just avoided it. Mrs. Carruthers,
however, was easily appeased.

"Yes," she said. "Stella has lived in India for the best part of eight
years. She came out with some friends in the winter, made Captain
Ballantyne's acquaintance and married him almost at once--in January, I
think it was. Of course I only know from what I've been told. I was a
schoolgirl in England at the time."

"Of course," Thresk agreed. He was conscious of a sharp little stab of
resentment. So very quickly Stella had forgotten that morning on the
Downs! It must have been in the autumn of that same year that she had
gone out to India, and by February she was married. The resentment was
quite unjustified, as no one knew better than himself. But he was a man;
and men cannot easily endure so swift an obliteration of their images
from the thoughts and the hearts of the ladies who have admitted that
they loved them. None the less he pressed for details. Who was
Ballantyne? What was his position? After all he was obviously not the
millionaire to whom in a more generous moment he had given Stella. He
caught himself on a descent to the meanness of rejoicing upon that.
Meanwhile Mrs. Carruthers rippled on.

"Captain Ballantyne? Oh, he's a most remarkable man! Older than
Stella, certainly, but a man of great knowledge and insight. People
think most highly of him. Languages come as easily to him as
crochet-work to a woman."

This paragon had been Resident in the Principality of Bakuta to the north
of Bombay when Stella had first arrived. But he had been moved now to
Chitipur in Rajputana. It was supposed that he was writing in his leisure
moments a work which would be the very last word upon the native
Principalities of Central India. Oh, Stella was to be congratulated! And
Mrs. Carruthers, in her fine mansion on Malabar Hill, breathed a sigh of
envy at the position of the wife of a high official of the British _Raj_.

Thresk looked over again to the portrait on the