"Oh, how I envy Mrs Olliver! We're just playing at life up here, you and I, like two dolls, while she is living the real thing down there." Evelyn Desmond, in utter astonishment, flung annoyance to the winds. "Really and truly, Honor," she declared, with conviction, "you are the most amazing person I've ever known!" CHAPTER XII. NOW IT'S DIFFERENT. "A word! how it severeth! O Power of Life and Death, In the tongue, as the preacher saith." --BROWNING. The great monsoon--a majestic onrush of cloud hurtling across the heavens, with dazzle of lightning and clangour of thunder--had long since rolled up from India's coastline to her utmost hills; bringing new forms of torment to the patient plains; filling mountain and valley and water-courses innumerable with the voice of melody. On the cedar-crowned heights of Murree, dank boughs dripped and drooped above ill-made houses, that gave free admittance to the moist outer world; tree ferns, springing to sudden life on moss-clad trunks and boughs, showed brilliant as emeralds on velvet. The whole earth was quick with hidden stirrings and strivings, the whole air quick with living sound--plash of rain-drops; evensong of birds; glad shouting of cicadas among the branches, and the laughter of a hundred fairy falls. Theo Desmond drank in the cool green wonder of it all with a keenly perceptive enjoyment; drew into his lungs deep draughts of the strong, clean mountain air; watched the frail curtain of mist swaying, lifting, spreading to a pearl-white film, till, through a sudden rent, the red gold of sunset burned, deepening to a mass of velvet shadow the inexpressible blue of rain-washed hills. His post of observation on this August evening was the saturated verandah of "The Deodars," where he had flung himself full length in Honor's canvas chair, a pipe between his teeth; hands locked behind his head; lavishly muddied boots and gaiters outstretched; the whole supple length of him eloquent of well-earned relaxation and repose. Three days earlier he had ridden up through a world of driving mist and rain in the wake of Harry Denvil's doolie; having secured a blessed month of respite for himself and two months for the Boy, who, by the efforts of three tireless nurses and a redoubtable Scotch doctor, had been dragged back from death; and was but just beginning to take hold on life and health again.