the girl tortured herself, as a loving woman will do, by imagining all
the most terrible things happening to the man of her heart. She feared no
longer the perils of the forest for him. She felt that he was master of man
or beast in it. But fever lays low the strongest. It might be that while
she was dancing he was lying ill, dying, perhaps dead. And she would not
know. The dreadful idea occurred to her after her return from a ball at
which she had been universally admired and much sought after. But, as she
sat wrapped in her blue silk dressing-gown, her feet thrust into satin
slippers of the same colour, her pretty hair about her shoulders, instead
of recalling the triumphs of the evening, the compliments of her partners,
and the unspoken envy of other girls, her thoughts flew to one solitary man
in a little bungalow, cloud-enfolded and comfortless, in a lonely outpost.
The sudden dread of his being ill chilled her blood and so terrified her
that, if the hour had not made it impossible, she would have gone out at
once and telegraphed to him to ask if all were well.

Yet the next instant her face grew scarlet at the thought. She sat for a
long time motionless, thinking hard. Then the idea occurred to her of
writing to him, writing a chatty, almost impersonal letter, such as one
friend could send to another without fear of her motives being
misunderstood. She had too high an opinion of Dermot to think that he would
deem her forward, yet it cost her much to be the first to write. But her
anxiety conquered pride. And she wrote the letter that Dermot read in his
bungalow in Ranga Duar while the storm shook the hills.

The girl counted the days, the hours, until she could hope for an answer.
Would he reply at once, she wondered. She knew that, even shut up in his
little station, he had much work to occupy him. He could not spare time,
perhaps, for a letter to a silly girl. And the thought of all that she had
put in hers to him made her face burn, for it seemed so vapid and frivolous
that he was sure to despise her.

On the fourth day after she had written to Dermot she was engaged to ride
in the afternoon with Captain Charlesworth. But in the morning a note came
to her from him regretting his inability to keep the appointment, as the
Divisional General had arrived in Darjeeling and intended to inspect the
Rifles after lunch. Noreen was not sorry, for she was going to a dance that
evening and did not wish to tire herself befo