She acknowledged the words with a scarcely perceptible movement, and a few minutes later the rattle of hoofs on the road came sharply to their ears. Honor's anger flamed up and overflowed. "Oh, Evelyn, how _can_ you behave like that to him!" Still no answer; only, after a short silence, Evelyn rose and faced her friend. Then Honor saw that her cheeks were wet and her eyes brimming with tears. It is to be feared that her first sensation was one of pure annoyance. Evelyn thoroughly deserved a scolding: and here she was, as usual, disarming rebuke by her genuine distress. "_Now_, I suppose he'll go--and get _killed!_" she said, in a choked voice. "My dear child, what nonsense! He'll come back safe enough. You don't deserve that he should be so patient with you--you don't indeed!" Evelyn looked up at her with piteous drowned eyes, whose expression had the effect of making Honor feel altogether in the wrong. "He shouldn't have made such disagreeable remarks about me and the Kresneys, then," she said brokenly. "All the same, I wanted to speak to him. But--I was crying, and I couldn't make a scene--with _you_ there. And now--if anything happens to him, and--I never see him again,--it'll be all _your_ fault!" With that finely illogical conclusion she swept out of the room, leaving Honor serenely unimpressed by her own share in the impending tragedy, yet not a little troubled at thought of the man who, for the rest of his natural life, lay at the mercy of such bewildering methods of reasoning. CHAPTER V. AN EXPURGATED EDITION. "A little lurking secret of the blood; A little serpent secret, rankling keen." The Kresneys looked in vain for the coveted invitation, and the trifling circumstance loomed largely on their narrow horizon. Owen Kresney possessed in a high degree that talent for discovering or inventing slights which is pride of race run crooked, and reveals the taint of mixed blood in a man's veins. As District Superintendent of Police he had relieved his predecessor in the middle of the hot weather. His sister being at Mussoorie, he had arrived alone; and, in accordance with the friendly spirit of the Frontier, had been made an honorary member of the station Mess, where he had found himself very much a stranger in a strange land. The man's self-conceit was unlimited; his sense of humour _nil_; and in less than a month he had been unanimously voted a "_pukka_[12] bounder" by that isolated community of Englishmen, who played as hard as they worked, and invariably "played the game"; a code of morals which had apparently been left out of Kresney's desultory education. The fact revealed itself in a hundred infinitesimal ways, and each revelation added a fresh stone to the wall that sprang up apace between himself and his companions. [12] Thorough.