He hardly knew whether he felt more relief or regret when his bandy was announced to drive him to the train for Puranapore. The other guests had departed, and Hester, after her efforts to entertain them, wore a visibly depressed air. When Mark clasped her hand and looked wistfully into her face he felt that she, too, thought it better no risk should be run of a repetition of the scene which had shamed her, for she gave no invitation for a future visit. His host, on the contrary, full of surface courtesy, was charging him not to fail to make Clive's Road his home when he chanced to be in Madras. Mark, at the same moment, happened to meet Hester's eye, and read there a look of doubt and pain which seemed to say, "How can he be so unjust as to welcome one and flout the other?" He felt strongly of the same opinion. One thing, however, seemed clear to him that he must, in spite of all his social disabilities in Alfred Rayner's eyes, continue to be a friend without fear and without reproach to the young wife whose happiness seemed in such jeopardy. CHAPTER IX. Mrs. Goldring, the Judge's wife at Puranapore, had finished her afternoon nap and was now preparing for the leading event of the day, the evening game at tennis, which on this occasion was to be held at Mrs. Samptor's, the wife of the Superintendent of the District Jail. She was therefore not a little surprised to see that lady descending from her pony-carriage at her own door when she was just about to drive to the Samptor's compound. Matters of interest in the little Mofussil society were narrow in their range, but they were none the less intense. Mrs. Goldring snatched her last hatpin hurriedly from the deferential brown fingers of her waiting ayah. "What can the woman want, Jane?" she said irritably, addressing her weary-looking daughter, who had just appeared on the threshold of the dressing-room. "I told her she couldn't have my silver teapot again. She almost burnt a hole in it last time, 'putting it on a lamp,' so she said! If I were at home I should say it had squatted on the kitchen range for a considerable time! I do hate that system of borrowing so much in vogue here! I suppose I must go and see what she wants. Now, Jane," she added, after a disapproving survey of her daughter, "I beg you will make yourself presentable for once. It isn't often your father gives me a piece of news, but he did tell me that the new Assistant-Collector was expected to-day. He may turn up for tennis if the Collector isn't too careless and indifferent to think of asking him to come. What a pity our meeting happens to be at Mrs. Samptor's. He might get a better impression of the station had it been elsewhere." Jane stood unresponsive in the doorway. Her eyelids moved slightly as she listened to her mother's remarks, but she made no reply, sullenly watching her mother's portly figure clad in rustling silks as she passed downstairs.