"I told you, Mr. Simpson, I could not possibly see anybody in my practising hours! How am I ever to keep up my poor music in this beastly country?" Then she added, in a pettish undertone: "I have broken my nail now!" And glancing up, accusingly, to behold a stranger: "Oh!" she exclaimed. Major Bethune smiled. The sight of this creature, so unmistakably fresh from the salt brisk English shores, was as pleasant as it was unexpected. "Oh, it’s not Mr. Simpson!" she cried, with a quaint air of discovery. The officer bowed. Life had taught him not to waste his energy on a superfluous word. "Oh!" she said again. She looked down at her nail once more, and then sucked it childishly. Over her finger she shot a look at him. She had very bright hazel eyes, under wide full brows. "Perhaps," she said, "you want to see the Runkle? I mean," she interrupted herself, with a little giggle—"I mean, my uncle, Sir Arthur." "I called to see Lady Gerardine," he answered imperturbably. "I wrote to her yesterday. She expects me." "Oh!" Every time this ejaculation shot from the girl’s lips it was with a new lively note of surprise and a comical rounding of small mouth and big eyes. Then she remembered her manners; and, plunging down on a chair herself: "Won’t you take a seat?" she cried, with an engaging schoolgirl familiarity. Bowing again, he obeyed. "Do you think Lady Gerardine will see me?" She glanced at the clock on the cabinet beside her. "My aunt will be here," she replied, "in just ten minutes. She is always down at the hour, though nobody comes till half-past." She flung a look of some reproach at the visitor’s inscrutable face, and passed her handkerchief over her own hot cheeks. "I think Aunt Rosamond is wonderful," she went on, preparing herself, with a small sigh, to the task of entertaining. "The Runkle—I mean my uncle—is always after her. But I am sure there is not another Lieutenant-Governor’s wife in India that does her duty half so well." Here she yawned, as suddenly as a puppy. The visitor still maintaining silence, she paused, evidently revolving subjects of conversation in her mind, and then started briskly upon her choice: "Of course, you don’t know who I am." Two deep dimples appeared in the plump cheeks. "I am Aspasia Cuningham, and I have come to live with my uncle and aunt in India. I wish I had not; I hate it. What is your name?" "Raymond Bethune." "Civil?" inquired Miss Aspasia, running her eye over his light-grey suit. "No, military. Guides. Major," he corrected. She nodded. "I see—turbans and things," commented she.