"You won't get very merry on soda-water," he protested. "Have some claret?" "I never touch it, thank you. Granny said it made one's nose red." "And so you and Lady Augusta never hit it off after all?" he remarked. "No; she was such a Saturday-to-Monday sort of grandmother! Always rushing here, and there, and back again, never at home except when she was asleep, always 'showing herself' somewhere, as she called it, always in the movement. I did not mind until she began to drag me with her, and insisted on showing _me_. Then she always dressed like my twin sister. Pray, what granddaughter could tolerate that?" Angel's expression became tragic, and Gascoigne laughed, quite a gay young laugh. "I assure you that granny has the ditto of this very blouse I'm wearing; and," speaking with increased energy, "one of the last scenes I had with her was to prevent her wearing a white muslin gown; of course, it was drowned in lace, but imagine white muslin at sixty-five," and she gave an impatient and despondent sigh. "It might have been seventy in the shade," acquiesced Gascoigne, ironically. "I'm afraid she must have been an immense responsibility. I can sympathise with you there." "Oh, it was not really that," and Angel's voice suddenly became the grave utterance of a much older woman. Her eyes looked dark and tragic as she leant a little forward and said, "It was the closed door between us—we never spoke of my mother." Angel communicated this fact as if she were alluding to some holy saint, and Philip, the hypocrite, bent his head in profound sympathy. "No, never till that once," resumed the girl. "It was the first and the last time. Our opinions were so opposed, it was as if two furious, long-leashed creatures had been suddenly let loose at one another's throats." After a little silence, during which she meditatively broke up bread, Angel suddenly looked over at her companion, and said: "Tell me, how do you like the way I do my hair now?" Philip gasped mentally, but brought out an adequate reply. "Immensely—last time you wore it down your back." "And so"—here she leant her elbows on the table, and locked her pretty hands, and looked over them at her guardian, "you are really going to take me down to Marwar to-morrow." "I am really," he answered promptly, "weather permitting." "How I hope the weather will not permit. I'd a million times rather stay up here in the jungle, the real delightful jungle, within reach of white bread, the post-office, and hairpins. I could sit and read, and dream, and sketch, and ride up and down the valleys for months, and be so happy. What a shame it is that one cannot enjoy what one _likes_." "Unfortunately we often like what is bad for us," said her guardian drily. Angel drew a sigh of assent, and then resumed, "We never would have found this place, only for one of my jampannis, whose brother is in your service; he knew the way; was it not luck?" "Yes," agreed Major Gascoigne. (But _was_ it?)