"Yes, that's a vexed question," replied Mark gravely. "But the Collector is getting his eyes opened to some things that were hidden from him for a time. Events are marching. You see he is so often away on tour. The town of Puranapore is but a very small corner of his dominion. His District is immense, and he takes as much interest in it as an English squire does in his acres--very much the same kind of interest too. His pride in land reclaimed and made to blossom is delightful to see. He has often made me ride miles out of the way with him to show me such a tract with its changed face. He would have made an ideal Forest Officer if he had not been Collector of the Revenue. Lately when we were camping, he pointed to a once fever-haunted jungle he had redeemed by draining the dreaded area. He smiled and said, 'I was just thinking last night as I read Tennyson's "Northern Farmer," that I could point to this bit of land made wholesome as my only good deed, like the old farmer who pinned his hope of salvation to his "stubbing of Thornaby waste!"'" "You speak of his reading Tennyson, Mr. Cheveril? I thought one of his peculiarities was that he never read--that there wasn't a book to be picked up in his house? I've heard his bungalow at Puranapore described as the most dismal of abodes." "Oh, yes, the Collector does read at times, and he does what is better, he thinks. He has a more original mind than most people, I assure you," argued Mark, not willing to admit the truth of the assertion concerning the absence of anything like a library from the Collector's shelves. "Pity he doesn't hit it off with his wife, isn't it?" remarked Mrs. Fellowes, who, Mark could see, was one of those who had imbibed a prejudice against the man he had come to love. "Perhaps you didn't know he was married, Mr. Cheveril, but he is! His wife lives in Belgravia and he here. It is said he didn't even go to see her the last time he was at home, and yet they are not legally separated, and I believe, he sends her heaps of money!" "Well, you see, I don't know the Honourable Mrs. Worsley," said Mark shortly. In one of his rare moments of self-revelation the elder man had laid bare to the younger the history of an ill-assorted marriage and its consequences, which, Mark decided, more by inference than from details, was the source of much that had warped a life, which Felix Worsley himself described as like "a blasted jungle tree"; though Mark thought he could still trace in it the noblest characteristics of the English oak. "Well, I must say the Collector of Puranapore has a warm partisan in you, Mr. Cheveril," returned Mrs. Fellowes warmly, "and I like you for it!" The pair in front had now turned their steps and came towards them. "I'm reminding Mrs. Rayner that if I walk her off her feet she won't be able to dance so lightly with you to-night as I desire to see, Cheveril," said Mr. Worsley, with a smile which his Assistant had learnt to love.