“What a fool I am! To think that I should have forgotten, even for a moment, that General Keeling was your father! Why, it was that which originally drew me to the Warden of the Marches--I mean--er--” Dick stumbled and hurried on--“well, I have worshipped him ever since I first went out. He is our patron saint out there in Khemistan, you know?” “I know,” said Georgia. “I found it so when I was there.” “But have you been in Khemistan? How is it that we never met?” “It was the year you were on leave, when you went round the world with your uncle and Mabel. I visited Khemistan to see whether there was any chance of my being able to complete my father’s work.” “How was that?” “It was his great desire that missionaries should come and settle among the people, but the Government thought it would be dangerous, and forbade them to establish themselves permanently on the frontier. My father and I always hoped that when I went out to keep house for him, I might be able to do something, just in the way of making a beginning--but as you know, he died before I left school.” “I know that it was while I was still in India,” said Dick. “It was reading the accounts of his life and work which first led me to make interest to get myself transferred to the Khemistan Horse, so as to be stationed on that frontier. But did you succeed in your mission?” “No; I travelled with a missionary and his wife who were itinerating through the country, but though the people were friendly, especially when they heard who I was, they did not care to listen to us, and the Government were still so hostile to the establishment of a station, that the society to which I had offered myself would not take up the work. Then I came home and studied medicine, hoping that I might eventually do something in that way. I believe that a Zenana Mission has just been set on foot in Bab-us-Sahel, on the coast, so that perhaps I shall be able to join it when we return from Ethiopia. I only accepted the post that the Government offered me in the expedition in the hope that some good might result from the journey.” “As regards Khemistan?” asked Dick. “Yes. It was my father’s country, and it is mine.” “And so it is mine!” said Dick, involuntarily. CHAPTER III. FELLOW-TRAVELLERS. Dick went home that night in a highly unsettled state of mind. He was cherishing a vague and unreasonable feeling of resentment against his own absence from Khemistan during Georgia’s visit to the province. It would have been very pleasant to come upon that missionary camp during his own hurried expeditions from point to point in the unquiet district for which he was responsible; pleasant also to watch Miss Keeling in her dealings with the people, among whom her father’s name was a synonym for all that was just and honourable. Perhaps, if he had met her again at that time, before she had been spoilt by her medical training, things might have fallen out differently for both of them. He might even----