ircumstances especially!"
lamented Charteris. "I can't get over that."

"My dear fellow, you know that the person of whom we are both thinking
would no more be influenced by a gold medal or a C.B. than by a diamond
necklace. No, hang it! the plan was yours, and the execution was
yours. I backed you up, you say? Well, then, put on my tombstone, 'He
was a good second,' and I ask no more."

But Charteris could not bring himself to take this philosophic view of
the case, and went about abusing the authorities and cursing the
injustice of fate, until he drew down upon himself a rebuke from James
Antony.

"Since you can neither refuse your honours nor share them, my good
fellow, you may as well wear them gracefully," he said. "As it is, you
are doing Gerrard no good. He was unlucky in his first post, which has
told against him, but he is a capable man, and bound to come to the
front eventually, provided his friends don't spoil his chances."

The shrewd common-sense of the advice silenced Charteris's murmurs, and
he faced with less outward rebelliousness the prospect of a week or two
at Ranjitgarh. This was a mere interlude before plunging again into
the main current of battle. The Governor-General was coming to the
Granthi capital to take counsel with the Commander-in-Chief as to the
further course of the war, which had not hitherto been conducted with
conspicuous success, and the honours for the Agpur campaign were to be
conferred. The cantonments and the Residency were full, and
Brevet-Major Charteris, C.B., was glad to share his former restricted
quarters with Gerrard. The Edmund Antonys were in occupation of the
house again, James Antony and his wife retiring into two rooms of the
main block, while Lady Cinnamond was once more at Government House.
With her had come down from the hills Marian Cowper, a sorrowful figure
in the heavy weeds then worn by even the youngest widows, but taking up
the burden of life again bravely. If she still shrank from Honour, it
was only they and their mother who could perceive it. Sir Arthur
Cinnamond arrived from the front with the Commander-in-Chief for a week
about Christmas time, and it so happened that Gerrard came suddenly
upon Honour riding with her father the day after his arrival. She wore
a habit made like the uniform of Sir Arthur's famous Peninsular
regiment--a fashion which probably owed its vogue to the semi-military
costume adopted by the young Queen Victoria f