“I think so. And then there are the hills--Simla, and so forth, which never were thought of in my father’s time. They had to make up their minds and put up with everything. We have many alleviations--the ladies have especially,” he added, with a look that said a great deal more. Why should he add by his looks so much importance to that fact? And how was it that Katherine, knowing nothing of the life in India, took up his meaning in the twinkling of an eye? “But the ladies,” she said, “don’t desert the plains where their--their husbands are, I hope, to find safety for themselves on the hills?” “I did not mean that,” he said, with a flush of colour all over his brown face (Katherine compared it, in spite of herself, to Dr. Burnet’s recent blush, with conclusions not favourable to the latter). “I mean that it is such a comfort to men to think that--what is most precious to them in the world--may be placed in safety at any critical moment.” “I wonder if that is Charlie Somers’ feeling,” Katharine said with an involuntary laugh. It was not that she meant to laugh at Charlie Somers; it was rather the irrestrainable expression of a lightening and rising of her own heart. “No doubt every man must,” James Stanford said. And they went on talking, he telling her many things which she did not fully understand or even receive into her mind at all, her chief consciousness being that this man--her first love--was the only one who had felt what a true lover should, the only one to whom her heart made any response. She did not even feel this during the course of that too rapid journey. She felt only an exhilaration, a softening and expansion of her whole being. She could not meet his eyes as she met Dr. Burnet’s; they dazzled her; she could not tell why. Her heart beat, running on with a tremulous accompaniment to those words of his, half of which her intelligence did not master at the time, but which came to her after by degrees. He told her that he was soon going back to India, and that he would like to go and see Stella, to let her know by an independent testimony how her sister was. Might he write and give her his report? Might he come--this was said hurriedly as the train dashed into the precincts of London, and the end of the interview approached--to Sliplin again one day before he left on the chance of perhaps seeing her--to inquire for Mr. Tredgold--to take anything she might wish to send to Lady Somers? Katherine felt the flush on her own face to be overwhelming. Ah, how different from that half-angry confused colour which she had been conscious of when the Rector offered his congratulations!