inish my letter when I don't know whether there is anything
in his to answer?" complained Marian. "Well, I will leave it unsealed,
and put in an extra sheet if necessary. I'll come out in a minute.
I'm sorry I am so cross, Honour. After all it isn't your fault that
you are not Charley."

"Of course not," said Honour indignantly, and there was more than a
suggestion of what was known, in those days of distended skirts, as
"flouncing" in the quick rustle with which she left the room. Somehow
Marian and she seemed perpetually to rub one another the wrong way, and
every one thought it was her fault, because Marian was always so bright
and pleasant in public. Marian received plenty of sympathy and wanted
more, but Honour felt that a little would be very pleasant to herself.
Yet why should her thoughts in this connection be suddenly discovered
to have flown to Gerrard? "He understands," she said to herself, and
blushed hotly in the darkness to remember that these were the very
words Marian had used of her husband. Giving herself a little shake,
as though to get rid of the momentary foolishness, she bent her
thoughts sternly to the subject of Sir Edmund and Lady Antony's
dinner-party. Ladies in the hills whose husbands were on service did
not accept invitations in those benighted days, and Honour had
naturally remained with her sister. Their bungalow stood a little
higher than the Resident's Lodge, and the effect of the torches by
which all the guests were lighted along the hill-paths was very pretty
from their verandah.

"Marian," she called out, "the people are beginning to leave. Some one
is coming up our path."

"Oh, it is only the new people--a judge or something and his wife--who
have taken Hilltop Hall. But I shall have finished before they pass
the gate. I should like to see what they are like."

But long before the usual procession--a gentleman on a pony, a lady in
a _jampan_, and torchbearers and servants _ad libitum_--which Honour
was expecting could have reached the gate, it was opened and two people
came up the steep path to the bungalow. By the light of the torch
carried before them by a servant, Honour recognised Lady Antony, with a
burnouse thrown over her evening dress, and her husband. Her heart
stood still, for such a visit could only mean bad news. Sir Edmund and
his wife were fond of dropping in informally on their young neighbours,
but to leave their guests, at an important entertainmen