Belle, with a lump in her own throat and tearful shining eyes, rode back past the bridge where Philip Marsden, leaning over the parapet, watched the oily flow of the canal water in the cut below. He looked up, thinking how fair and slim and young she was, and raised his hat expecting her to pass, but she paused. He felt a strange thrill as his eyes met hers still wet with tears. "I have so much to thank you for, Major Marsden," she said with a little tremor in her voice, "and I do it so badly. You see I don't always understand--" Something in her tone smote Philip Marsden with remorse. "Please not to say any more about it, Miss Stuart. _I_ understand,--and,--and,-- I'm glad you do not." Thinking over his words afterwards he came to the conclusion that both these statements had wandered from the truth; but how, he asked himself a little wrathfully, could any man tell the naked, unvarnished, disagreeable truth with a pair of grey eyes soft with tears looking at him? Dick, of course, raved about his cousin for the rest of the evening, and besought the Major to send him confidential reports on the progress of events. In his opinion disaster was unavoidable, and he was proceeding to detail his reasons, when Major Marsden cut him short by saying: "I would rather not hear anything about it; and I should like to know, first, if you are engaged to your cousin?" Dick confessed he was not; whereupon his companion told him that he would promise nothing, except, he added hastily, catching sight of Dick's disappointed face, to help the girl in any way he could. With this the boy professed to be quite content; perhaps he had grasped the fact that Philip Marsden was apt to be better than his word. And indeed a day or two after Dick's departure Marsden took the trouble to go over and inquire of John Raby what sort of a man Lâlâ Shunker Dâs, the great contractor, was supposed to be. The young civilian laughed. "Like them all, not to be trusted. Why do you ask?" He broke in on the evasive answer by continuing, "The man is a goldsmith by caste. I suppose you know that in old days they were never allowed in Government service. As the proverb says, 'A goldsmith will do his grandmother out of a pice.' But if the Lâlâ-ji gives you trouble, bring him to me. I've been kind to him, and he is grateful, in his way." Now the history of John Raby's kindness to Lâlâ Shunker Dâs was briefly this: he had discovered him in an attempt to cheat the revenue in the matter of income-tax, and had kept the knowledge in his own hands. "Purists would say I ought to report it, and smash the man," argued this astute young casuist; "but the knowledge that his ruin in the matter of that _Rai Bâhâdur_-ship hangs by a thread will keep the old thief straighter; besides it is always unwise to give away power."