"I shall meet you in Delhi," he wrote in reply to the letter in which she gave him her final decision, "and see you safe to Bombay. To begin with, there are one or two little business formalities which require my presence as executor, and then I must see you once more. There is to be a punitive expedition over the frontier in spring; so leave will be impossible until the cold weather after next, and that is a long time. I may never see you again." She read these words as she sate on the window-seat of the little drawing-room where she had read the news of his death three years before. Three years! Was it only three years, since, with her eyes still wet with the tears she did not understand, she had gone out into the mist and the rain to find that vision of a sunlit world at her feet with John Raby standing at her side? And now he was dead, dead in anger, while tears, far more bitter than those she had shed at the thought of Philip's death, came to her eyes with the thought of seeing him again. Yet the world seemed to have stood still otherwise; the little room, the slanting pines, the drifts of cloud over the hills, even Maud in the rocking-chair, and Mrs. Stuart still aggressive in her tears and widow's caps--for the good lady had ordered a new one in anticipation of Belle's visit, moved thereto by an ill-defined but very kindly impulse of sympathy. But Belle did not know this; she only saw that sameness which is almost irritating when we ourselves have changed so much. She used to sit in the little room where she had slept the night before her wedding, and wonder what she had done to bring herself into this position; herein, for once, agreeing with Philip, who far away with his regiment asked himself many and many a time what either of them had done of which they needed to be ashamed. Meanwhile the little household went on its monotonous way contentedly. Charlie was at school, much improved, and glad of Belle's presence; partly because he was fond of her, partly because she occupied his room and thus prevented that weekly return home from Saturday to Monday at which he was beginning to grow restive, since it was almost as derogatory to dignity as being a home-boarder. Mrs. Stuart employed herself in weeping placidly over Belle's misfortunes, and paying visits to her friends, during which she darkly hinted that she had always been against the match; for Mr. Raby had played _écarté_, and though of course he had not lost his money that way, it was not _comme il faut_ in a young civilian. Maud was growing older in the rocking-chair, and inclined, as ever, to resent other people's tears.