“I know you of old, Regy,” replied Mrs. Mayhew with a sigh. “Your asking me if I take exception to any of your arrangements is only a Chinese compliment; once you make up your mind nothing will alter it, so there is no use wasting words. I think you ought to stay at home instead of going to India. I think you ought to insist on bringing Alice to her senses; or suppose you allow _me_ to take her in hand? Let her come here on a visit whilst you go out to Cheetapore and investigate this horrid business thoroughly.” “No,” replied Reginald coldly; “Alice and I are strangers for the future. You will oblige me very much, Helen, by referring to her as seldom as possible. She thinks me a hypocrite, a deceiver, a thoroughly bad man. Such were her own words. She could not think worse of me if I were the greatest scoundrel that ever walked this earth.” “Reginald, I am sure she does not,” pleaded Helen. It was in vain she begged him to reconsider his decision. He listened to all she had to say with a kind of contemptuous tolerance. “Very kind of you, Helen, to take her part in this way; very good of you to defend her; but, as you yourself remarked just now, it is only a waste of words.” One has a good opportunity of studying Sir Reginald Fairfax as he stands on the rug looking down on Mrs. Mayhew, who, leaning back in the easiest of chairs, is slowly fanning herself. Tall, slender, and graceful, his well-cut evening clothes fit him and suit him admirably. “Gentleman” is stamped on every line and lineament, and there is a leisurely ease and deliberation about everything he says or does; the repose that stamped the line of “Vere de Vere” is not wanting in the Fairfax family. His eyes are the most striking feature--so dark, so cool, so keen, they seem to read one’s thoughts like a book, to penetrate one through and through. His delicately-chiselled high-bred nose (to particularise each feature impartially) and proud sensitive nostrils he inherits from a long line of ancestors. Do not dozens of similar profiles adorn the walls of the gallery at Looton? There is a certain look about his well-cut lips--barely to be guessed at beneath his dark moustache--that to a close observer indicates a resolute, not to say imperious, disposition; and something altogether intangible in his bearing points out the soldier. A handsome, dark, daring face one could easily imagine leading the headlong hurricane of a cavalry charge. CHAPTER VIII. MRS. MAYHEW’S LITTLE SCHEME.