There was to be a ball in the old mess-house, and Mark took his stand on the hill and watched the big cooking fires, the lit-up bungalows, the hurrying figures; listened to the hum of voices, the neighing of ponies, the tuning of musical instruments. Could this be really the condemned, deserted cantonment of Hawal Bagh, that many a night he had seen wrapped in deathlike silence? The dance commenced briskly, open doorways showed gay decorations, the band played a lively set of lancers, and a hundred merry figures seemed to flit round and pass and repass; whilst the jackals and hyenas, who had been wont to hold their assemblies in the same quarter, slunk away up the hills in horrified disgust. Presently people came out into the bright moonlight, and began to stroll up and down. Mark recognized many well-known figures. There was Honor, in white, walking with a little man who was conversing and gesticulating with considerable vivacity. She seemed preoccupied, and held her head high--gazing straight before her. Lookers on see most of the game. The man must be a dense idiot not to notice that she was not listening to one word he said. There was Miss Paske, escorted by a ponderous companion with a rolling gait--Sir Gloster, of course--and Miss Lalla was undoubtedly entertaining him. It almost seemed as if he could hear his emphatic “excellent” where he stood. Mrs. Merryfeather and Captain Dorrington, Captain Merryfeather and Miss Fleet, and so on--and so on--as pair after pair came forth. Suddenly he became aware of the fact that he was not the only spectator. Just below him stood a figure, so motionless, that he had taken it for part of a tree. The figure moved, and he saw the Persian lady standing gazing with fixed ravenous eyes on the scene below them. He made a slight movement, and she turned hastily and came up towards him. They were acquaintances of some standing now, and met once or twice a week either among the lepers or about the cantonment. Mark had never ventured to call at the mysterious little bungalow, but he sent her offerings of flowers, fruit, and hill partridges, and she in return admitted him to her friendship--to an entirely unprecedented extent. Whether this was due to the young man’s handsome face, and chivalrous respect for her privacy and her sex, or whether it was accorded for the sake of another, who shall say? “You are looking on, like myself,” he remarked, as she accosted him. “Are you interested?” “Nay, ‘the world is drowned to him who is drowned,’ says the proverb. I came to Hawal Bagh to retire from the crowd, and lo! a crowd is at my gates!” “This, surely, must be quite a novel sight to you?” She gazed at him questioningly, and made no answer. “Of course you have never seen this sort of thing before, English people in evening dress, dancing to a band?” “I have known phantoms--yea, I have seen such as these,” pointing, “in a--dream--thousands of years ago.”