"Hard! Of course it is hard," he answered with a sudden pain at his heart. "Yet it is not my fault. I meant no harm." "You have done no harm as far as I know," was the still colder reply. But in her turn she rose and looked out to that low bar of red still lingering in the horizon. "It is all very unfortunate, but we shall manage,--somehow." There was a pause, then she added in quite her ordinary tone, "I don't think John can be coming to-night, so we need not wait dinner for him. They have taken your things to the end room. I see a light there." "But I have no right--" he began, crossing to where she stood. She turned to him with a sudden gracious smile. "Right! you have every right to everything. You have given me,--what have you not given me?" A tall figure crouching in the verandah rose as they passed through the open French window. "Who is that?" she asked, half startled. "Afzul Khân. I can't take him back to the regiment, of course, but he came so far with me. He has business, he says, in Faizapore." "Afzul Khân! Call him here, please." It was a curious group: those two bound to each other by such a tissue of misunderstanding and mistake, and the Pathan responsible for part of those mistakes. He stood by _salaaming_ stolidly; for all that taking in the scene with a quick eye. "You have brought me back the best friend I ever had," said Belle with a ring in her voice, and all instinctively her hand sought her companion's and found it. "It is God's will, not mine," was the reply. Not an atom of sentiment in the words, not a scrap of sanctimoniousness; simply a statement of fact. God's will! And stowed away in the folds of his fur coat lay a long blue envelope, ominously stained with blood, and addressed in a free bold hand to Miss Belle Stuart, favoured by Major Marsden of the 101st Sikhs. That was poor Dick's will at any rate. Even in their ignorance those two looked at each other and wondered. God's will! It was strange, if true. "We dine in the garden now, it is cooler. I shall be ready in ten minutes," said Belle. She was waiting for him under the stars when he came out from his room, and the slender figure against its setting of barren plain and over-arching sky seemed all too slight for its surroundings. "You must be very lonely here," he said abruptly. Her light laugh startled him. "Not to-night at any rate! To-night is high holiday, and I only hope the _khânsâmah_ will give us a good dinner. Come! you must be hungry."