"The night of the breaking of the monsoon, of those riotings and fires at Bhutpur, your father bartered his birthright, in a certain particular, against your restoration to health. The exact nature of that renunciation I cannot explain to you. The whole transaction lies beyond the range of ordinary endeavour; and savours of the transcendental--or the superstitious, if you please to take it that way. But call it by what name you will, his extravagant gamble with the Lords of Life and Death worked, apparently. For you got well; and you have stayed well, dear witch--thanks to those same Lords of Life and Death, whose favour your father attempted to buy with this act of personal sacrifice. He was willing to pay a price most men would consider prohibitive to secure your recovery. And, with an unswerving sense of honour, he has gone on paying, until that which, at the start, must have amounted to pretty severe discipline has crystallized into habit. What you tell me of this young man, Darcy Faircloth's history, goes, indirectly, to strengthen my admiration for your father's self-denying ordinance, both in proposing and in maintaining this strange payment." There--it was finished, his special pleading. Carteret felt unfeignedly glad. He was unaccustomed to put forth such elaborate expositions, more particularly of a delicate nature and therefore offering much to avoid as well as much to state. "So you are bound to play a straight game with him--dear child. Believe me he deserves it, is finely worthy of it. Be open with him. Show him your letter. Ask his permission--if you have sufficient courage. Your courage is the measure of the sincerity of your desire in this business. Do you follow me?" "Yes--but I shall distress him," Damaris mournfully argued. She was bewildered, and in her bewilderment held to the immediate and obvious. "Less than by shutting him out from your confidence, by keeping him at arm's length." "Neglecting him?" "Ah! so that rankles still, does it? Yes, neglecting him just a trifle, perhaps." "But the neglect is over--indeed, it is over and utterly done with." And in the ardour of her disclaimer, Damaris pressed against Carteret, her face upturned and, since she too was tall, very close to his. "Just because it is over and done with I begged you to bring me back with you to-night. I wanted to make a clean break with all the frivolities, while everything was quite clear to me. I wanted, while I still belonged to you, Colonel Sahib, through our so beautifully dancing together twice"-- "God in Heaven!" Carteret said under his breath. For what a past-master in the art of the torturer is your white souled maiden at moments!