"My poor boy!" she murmured, and sighed--or was it a sigh?--a sound that seemed to come less from the heart than the spirit. "My poor boy! But don't you know that you are absurd? I have three brothers--one of them, by the way, is here now; he went down the coast on Tuesday with some friends; he will be back, though, to-morrow or the day after. However, each of my brothers has fallen in love with a woman older than himself, and each of them has fallen in love again and again. I am, believe me, grateful for your homage. What you have said is enough to make any woman pleased. And were I younger--well, then, since you will have it so--were I free, I would ask to hear it until I knew the words by heart. It would be pleasant, that. Oh, there might be so very many pleasant things; yet that is one that may not be. To-morrow, the next day, no matter, presently you will go; a week later you will find some beauty in Madras, and, if you think of me then, it will be but with a smile." She had risen at last, and stood now smiling too. For the life of him Tancred could not imagine anything fairer, more debonair, nor yet more just than she. "If I vex you," he said, "I will hold my tongue. But at least you might stay. I will promise this--" But whatever the intended promise may have been it remained unformulated. In the entrance of the bale-bale Liance had suddenly appeared. "It is late, is it not?" Mrs. Lyeth, for countenance sake, inquired. The girl shrugged her shoulders. A gong in the distance answered in her stead. "It _is_ late," Mrs. Lyeth announced. "We had better go in." She moved from the pavilion, and presently all three reached the house. The hallway was unlighted, a flicker from the dining-room beyond serving only to make the darkness more opaque. "Where is Atcheh?" she asked, and called the "boy" by name. "There," said Tancred, "let me try to find a match." He groped down the corridor to his room and in a moment or two returned. On the way back he passed some one he took to be Liance. "I could not find one," he exclaimed. So well as he was able to make out, Mrs. Lyeth had not moved. To his speech she answered nothing. He advanced a little nearer and tried to take her hand again, but it eluded him. And in an effort to possess himself of it he approached nearer still. Her face seemed to be in the way; for one fleeting second his lips rested on it, then a noise of hoofs must have alarmed him, for he wheeled like a rat surprised. And presently, after he had reached his room again, he heard Mrs. Lyeth welcoming her future husband on the porch. III.