"Of course," proceeded her lord and master, with fresh gusto, "I can quite understand, dear, that you should shrink a little from the business. It would naturally be a slightly painful one. Your social duties occupy you a good deal, and——" he tenderly pulled her ear, "you have not much inclination for literary labour, have you? Therefore, my love, overworked as I am, I have resolved to take the matter into my own hands. In fact, I have actually promised Major Bethune that I will be responsible for the task." "You!" Her pale lips laughed silently. "Yes, I myself." He rubbed his hands and nodded. "I shall make the time, my love." "You?" she repeated, and rose stiffly to her feet. "No." "My dear Rosamond!" It had come upon her, after all. Here would no refusal serve her any more, no strength of determination, no piteousness of pleading. Before this smiling self-confidence of will what resistance could avail? It is the relentless trickle that wears the stone. "No hands but mine, at least. No eyes but mine!" "My dear child!" "One would have thought that my wishes would be paramount in the matter; but you drive me, all of you. Have your way." "You amaze me—this is childish, unreasonable!" She stared vacantly before her. "Kismet!" she said. "It is fate—I will do it." "I have never heard such nonsense in my life." "But at least," her eyes shot flame upon him, "let no one talk of laying a hand upon these things. Good God, they, at least, are mine!" Sir Arthur rose also, too bewildered still to be able to grasp the full measure of the offence. "You are certainly very strange to-night, Rosamond," he exclaimed with testy anxiousness. "Not yourself at all. I feel convinced you have a touch of fever." He stretched out his fingers for her pulse. Quickly she evaded his touch. "Write to that man," she said, enunciating her words with painful distinctness, "tell him that he has gained his point." Ignoring the unbecoming and extraordinary situation of having a command issued to himself in such imperious tones from his wife’s lips, Sir Arthur moved in high dudgeon towards the door. "I insist upon your taking an effervescing draught at once. And to-morrow I shall certainly call in Saunders to see you. Jani, your mistress must go to bed." The door fell back. Rosamond sank down once more on the settee and sat, with her elbows on her knees, her chin on her clasped hands, staring at the marble floor, long, long into the night, while Jani waited and never even moved a finger. *CHAPTER VII* If sleep came at all to Rosamond that night, it came with no refreshment of forgetfulness, but rather with an increase of inner struggle. Hour merged into hour until even the noisy Indian town fell into some kind of silence; but the voices in her troubled soul ceased not their clamour.