For thirty-six hours the unconsciousness for which she had longed cradled Rosamond, and when she came to herself it was slowly and with dimness. Three times, indeed, did day and night slip by her in her darkened and silent room before she even began to wonder how it was she should be left in such peace. But upon the fourth dawn, as the sun set to work to paint once more the jewel glories of her walls, memory came back upon her like a torrent.

She sat up, wildly crying:

"Jani, the box! What have they done with the box?"

The ayah's arms were round her in a second. Jani whispered and soothed her mistress as, long ago, she had soothed her nursling. Safe was the mem sahib's box; no one should lay finger on it but herself. But the mem sahib must be good and sleep, for Jani was by her. And Rosamond let her head rest gratefully upon the wasted bosom that once had held such loving bounties for her, and from thence slid back upon her pillows into forgetfulness again. She was weary still, with a great and blessed weariness.

*      *      *      *      *

Dr. Saunders paid brief daily visits. In Sir Arthur's opinion he was inclined to make culpably light of the whole affair—to allow those unimportant fever cases in the compound to weigh against the indisposition of the Lieutenant-Governor's wife.

It is a notable fact that the medical man treats the feminine syncope as not calling for much notice. And though the excellent Scot conceded that there might be some shock caused by the fall, to account for the prolonged unconsciousness, he declined to admit to Sir Arthur there was ground for anxiety or to recommend any treatment but quiet—absolute quiet. The preliminary symptom of irritability towards himself which Sir Arthur commented upon as extraordinary and alarming, Dr. Saunders in so many words declined, as a waste of time, even to discuss.

Nevertheless, as days succeeded each other and the patient's languor, not to say apathy, continued unabated, Dr. Saunders abruptly changed his tactics and informed his Excellency that he had better lose no time in sending his wife home.

"Pack her off," he said brusquely.

"Pack her off!" The choice of words was as unfitting as the idea they embodied was distasteful.

"I thought," said Sir Arthur, loftily, "that you were aware, Dr. Saunders, of my intention of progressing homewards next month."

"Well, I should pack off Lady Gerardine by the next boat," said the doctor, no whit abashed. "There's a good deal of sickness about, and I should not like to take the responsibility of keeping her on here in this condition. She's in a queer low state—damn queer low state, Sir Arthur."

Sir Arthur puffed an angry breath down his nostrils and fixed a withering gaze on the other's dry, impassive countenance.

What sort of a physician was this who, having charge of the precious health of such a distinguished household, could allow one of its most important members to get into a damn queer low state and then brazenly announce the fact? Sir Arthur, a spot of red anger burning upon each cheekbone, gave Dr. Saunders clearly to understand how grossly he had failed in his post of trust, and announced his own intention of procuring higher opinion without delay. Whereat the doctor shrugged his shoulders and drove off in his little trap at break-neck speed, as philosophically as ever.

The higher medical opinion was procured. And though it was enveloped in phraseology better suited to the patient's distinguished station, it was substantially the same as the first—with the single difference that it seemed to take a more serious view of the case. Lady Gerardine was once more ordered home with the least possible delay, this time under penalties so obscurely hinted at as to seem far more alarming than the most explicit statement.

Sir Arthur's irritable anxiety caught fire again. He hastened the departure with as much energy as he had hitherto displayed in repudiating the idea. Truth to tell, no prescription could have well been less pleasing to him. Precluded himself by public business from leaving before his allotted time, not only would his stately "progress" home be sorely shorn of its chief adornment, but the visit of his distinguished relative, Lady Aspasia Melbury, would have to be unceremoniously postponed. Moreover, it was never part of his views of the marital state to allow his beautiful wife to remove herself more than a day's journey from his personal influence. Scornfully as he would have repudiated any suggestion of jealousy (and indeed, as Aspasia had asserted, he was perhaps too vain a man to entertain so unflattering a guest in the complacency of his thoughts), he had, whether from long residence in the East or natural disposition, an almost oriental manner of regarding the wife as an appanage to the man's estate—a satellite, pleasing and brilliant enough, but yet a mere satellite in the greater luminary's orbit of glory. And therefore, while feverishly speeding the necessary preparations, he could not but let it be seen that he was disappointed, not to say hurt, that there should be any necessity for them.

Lady Gerardine showed herself as gently indifferent to reproach as she had been to solicitude. But the physician's wisdom was so far justified that, from the moment she was told of his decision, she roused herself and began to take some interest in life again.

"Home," she said, "England! Oh, I am glad!"

And, by-and-by, when she was alone with Aspasia, she began, to the girl's delight, to discuss plans with quite an eagerness in her weak voice.

They were in a long cool room, one of the bygone zenana apartments preserved practically untouched, which opened upon the one side into the garden through the arches of a colonnade, and was secluded even from that quiet spot by marvellous stone lacework screens, each different down to the smallest detail of design, yet all in harmony. However the small dusky Eastern beauties may have rebelled in their day against these exquisite prison walls; the present Northern mistress of the whilom palace found pleasure in their very seclusion, their apartness; and, according to her wont, she feasted her soul lazily on their artistic perfections.

She was stretched on a highly painted Indian couch which had been converted into a sofa, and let her eyes wander from the carving of the window screens themselves to their even lovelier reflections, cut in grey shadow on the white marble of the pavement. From the inner rooms the waters of the baths played murmurous accompaniment to her thought and her interrupted speech. Aspasia, squatting on the rug at the foot of the couch, listened, commented, and suggested.

The latter had not yet quite overcome her horrified sense of guilt in connection with Lady Gerardine's singular breakdown. Without being able to piece together any reasonable explanation of late events, she felt instinctively that here was more than met the eye; that there was in the web of her aunt's life, so to speak, an under-warp of unknown colour and unexpected strength; that behind the placid surface there lay secret depths; and that her own trifling treachery had unwittingly set forces in motion with incalculable possibilities. She had gone about, these days, with a solemn look—a living presentment of childish anxiety. The scared shadow was still on her pretty face as she now sat in attendance.

"Home in six weeks..." said Rosamond, dreamily. "We shall still find violets amid the dark-green leaves, Baby, and brown and yellow chrysanthemums on the top of their frost-bitten stalks."

"And is it not jolly," said Aspasia, hugging her knees, "to think that we can go and paddle about in the wet as much as ever we like, without any one after us! And isn't it delightful to be going off just our two selves. Oh! Aunt Rosamond, you gave me an awful fright, you know; but really it was rather well done of you, to faint off like that. You see, the doctor says, whatever they do, now, they're not to contradict you. If ever I get an illness I hope it will be that sort. It is worth anything to be leaving Runkle behind."

Rosamond did not answer, unless a small secret smile in her pillows could be called an answer.

"I don't suppose," proceeded Baby, emboldened, "that you have ever been free from the dear Runkle for more than three days at a time since you married him."

The phrase being a mere statement of fact, it was again left without response.

"And really," pursued Aspasia, warming to her subject, "the way he pounced upon us last summer up in the hills was enough to ruin the nerves of a camel. No sooner gone than he was back. Positively one would rather have had him at home the whole time!"

Force of comparison evidently could no further go. Lady Gerardine gave one of her rare laughs. Baby's face was all wrathful gravity.

Poor Sir Arthur! Disciplinarian as he was, he failed to inspire his immediate circle with anything like average respect. It was a study in morals to watch the rapidity with which the first awe of some newly joined member of his English staff, the flattered reverential fascination produced by early intercourse with the great man, gave way to the snigger, the jeer, the grudging submission. But, serene in his own consciousness of power and his own heaven-born gift of applying it, Sir Arthur laid down the law smilingly and inflexibly; and the native world about him, at least, bowed to his rule with impassive face and supple back. And, if there were any symptoms of that mutiny which his niece declared a long continuance of his rule must inevitably foster, it is quite certain that he would have refused to believe in it until the rebel's knife was actually at his throat.

"Ah," cried he, coming in upon them at the sound of his wife's laugh, "that's better! I thought we should soon have you on the right road when Sir James took you in hand."

Sir James's harmless ammonia mixture, orange-scented, differed as little from Dr. Saunders' sedative drops as the pith of his flowery advice from the latter's blunt statement. But Dr. Saunders was in deep disgrace, and would probably remain so until the Governor's next colic.

Lady Gerardine's face had instantly fallen back to its usual expression of indifference.

"I hope you weren't listening," cried Aspasia, pertly, "we were just saying what a bore you are."

Sir Arthur laughed again, very guilelessly, and stooped to pinch her little pink ear.

"I have wired to Sir James to have his opinion upon the best resort for you in England, until my arrival, dear. His answer has just come."

He spread out the flimsy sheet and ran his short trim finger along the lines: "'Decidedly Brighton, Margate, or Eastbourne.' It is evident he thinks you require bracing."

"I have quite decided where I am going," answered Lady Gerardine, turning her head on her cushion to look at him.

"Eh?" cried Sir Arthur, scarce able to believe his ears.

"I have been unable to talk business, hitherto," proceeded his wife, gently. "But I wanted to tell you I have decided: I go to Saltwoods."

"To Saltwoods?" His eyes were fixed, protruding, in displeased amazement.

To Saltwoods, that paltry little Dorsetshire manor-house which, by the recent demise of Captain English's mother, had devolved upon his young widow! The Old Ancient House, as it was invariably called throughout the countryside, set in such preposterous isolation that the letting of it on any terms had ever remained an impossibility—the legacy was by no means acceptable to Sir Arthur. The various sums that he had already had to disburse for its upkeep and repairs had been a very just grievance with him; and one of the many matters of business he had resolved to accomplish on his return to England was the sale, at any loss, of this inconvenient estate.

"I mean to go there," said Lady Gerardine in the same tone of delicate deliberation, but sitting up among her cushions and pushing the hair from her forehead with the gesture that he had already learned to regard with some dismay as indicative of "her nervous moments." "Old Mary, the housekeeper, can easily get in a couple of country girls, and that will do for me and Aspasia very well."

"Preposterous! Now that's what I call perfectly idiotic! I don't want to find fault with you, my dear girl, and of course you've been ill and all that. But it's quite evident you are not yet in a state to see things in their right light. 'A case of sudden neurasthenia upon a highly sensitive organisation,' as Sir James says."

This was certainly a more suitable definition of her ladyship's malady than the "damn queer low state" of Dr. Saunders; and Sir Arthur rolled it with some complacency upon his tongue.

"There, there, we won't discuss the matter any more just now. Rely upon me to arrange all that is necessary in the most suitable and satisfactory manner." He drew a carved stool to the head of the couch, and possessed himself of her hand in his affectionate way. "There, there, she must not be worried!"

Across the fatigue of Lady Gerardine's countenance came an expression that was almost a faint amusement, tempered with pity. Aspasia watching, very demure, mouse-still, from her lowly post, found the situation one of interest.

"You are always kind," said Rosamond then; "but I shall be better at Saltwoods than anywhere. You forget that I have work to do."

"Work?" echoed Sir Arthur. He drew back to contemplate her uneasily; positively this sounded like wandering.

"It was your wish," she continued (could there lurk in that soft voice an undertone of resentment?), "that I should ... look over"—she hesitated as if she could not pronounce her dead husband's name and remodelled her phrase—"that I should assist Major Bethune with his book."

"Ah!"

Sir Arthur remembered. But the proposition was none the less absurd. That Lady Gerardine, too delicate to be able to remain with him—with him, Sir Arthur, the Lieutenant-Governor, at a moment when a hostess was eminently needed at Government House—should be taking into her calculations the claims of so unimportant a personality as that of poor dead and gone English, was, for all his consciously punctilious chivalry towards his predecessor's shade, a piece of irritating feminine perversity that positively stank in Sir Arthur's nostrils. He snorted. For a moment, indeed, he was really angry. And the sharpness of his first exclamation brought the blood racing to Aspasia's cheeks. She hesitated on the point of interference. But the invalid's unruffled demeanour made no demand upon assistance. Suddenly realising himself ............