“You seem to take it very lightly, Rhoda, but I must say it serves you perfectly right for having thrown the poor man over in that disgraceful way. Girls who behave like that are generally sorry for it later. I knew of a chit here in Darjiling that jilted a man in the Staff Corps and ran away with a tea-planter. The man will be the next Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, everybody says, and I hope she likes her tea-planter.” “Mummie!” Rhoda called down confidentially from the landing. “Well?” “Put your head in a bag, mummie. I’m going out. Shall I bring you some chocolates or some nougat or anything?” “I shall tell your father to whip you. Yes, chocolates if they’re fresh—_insist_ upon that. Those crumbly Neapolitan ones, in silver-and-gold paper.” “All right. And mummie!” “What?” “Write and congratulate Mr. Ancram. Then he’ll know there’s no ill-feeling!” Which Mrs. Daye did. CHAPTER XIX. Ten minutes later Rhoda stood fastening her glove at her father’s door and looking out upon a world of suddenly novel charm. The door opened, as it were, upon eternity, with a patch of garden between, but eternity was blue and sun-filled and encouraging. The roses and sweet-williams stood sheer against the sky, with fifty yellow butterflies dancing above them. Over the verge of the garden—there was not more than ten feet of it in any direction—she saw tree-tops and the big green shoulders of the lower hills, and very far down a mat of fleecy clouds that hid the flanks of some of these. The sunlight was tempting, enticing. It made the rubble path warm beneath her feet and drew up the scent of the garden until the still air palpitated with it. Rhoda took little desultory steps to the edge of the ledge the house was built on, and down the steep footway to the road. The white oaks met over her head, and far up among the tree-ferns she heard a cuckoo. Its note softened and accented her unreasoned gladness, seemed to give it a form and a metre. She looked up into the fragrant leafy shadows and listened till it came again, vaguely aware that it was enough to live for. If she had another thought it was that Philip Doyle had come too late to see the glory of the rhododendrons, there was only, here and there, a red rag of them left.