Rosamond raised her eyes, to look unseeingly at the plaster walls before her. The ignorant thing that had been Rosamond English, that once had had such treasure given her, and knew it not; she had but placed her hand in his as a lost child places her hand in that of the first kind stranger who will lead her out of the desolate wood. Hers had been a privilege so rare that, to the eyes of the world, it seems to be a thing impossible—a man’s virgin love. Too often had Lady Gerardine seen a meaning smile, under a white moustache, on lips that recalled complacently "the little indiscretions of my youth"; too much had she seen herself, unwillingly, of the lives of the young men about her in the Residency not to realise this now. But then—Harry had been right—she had feared him, feared this strong and chaste passion, feared these virgin ardours; feared the man who had brought her his whole heart, whose eyes had never even looked on sin. * * * * * There was a great silence about her. The fire was dead; the day was closing in; the robin had flown away. Extinct hearth, bleak falling twilight, empty room, silence itself seemed to cry to her with one great voice: "Too late ... too late!" And the gloom and the desolation of the deserted old house, on the waste English downs, were fit accompaniments to the slow agony in that fort, clinging on the bare flank of Himalayan crags, far away, under the eternal snows; agony over now and world-forgotten, but re-enacted for her alone, who had refused herself at the right hour to her share in it. *CHAPTER XIV* Despondency was beginning to creep over even Harry English’s dauntless spirit: in the next sheet Rosamond took up—she had to peer closer now in the gathering dusk—for the first time he expressed doubt of their reunion. You will go back to England (he wrote). You will go to the old Mother. My poor girl, I feel as if I had broken your life. But you are young and she is very strong. She will take you to that deep heart of hers, where I have been so well all my life; and you will both always remember that it is for England. And if you forget me, oh Rosamond, my Rosamond, you are young, you will forget!—no, I will write no more in this strain.... I won’t bind you; but there are things that a man in his living flesh cannot regard without rebellion, whatever his sense of justice may tell him. The dead will be quiet. Sometimes I think I am a little mad. * * * * * You will like to know how this old place looks that you have, all unconsciously, filled with your presence these days, these nights....