Yet, under his impassive exterior, Raymond Bethune was conscious of a keener interest than he had felt these many years. But it was not in the smartness of the Lieutenant-Governor’s escort, in the gorgeousness of his equipages or the general splendour of the magnate himself that he found food for speculation; it was in the personality of Sir Arthur’s wife—a repellent yet fascinating enigma. His thoughts perpetually worked round it without being able to solve it. In another manner, a sweet, vague stirring of his being—totally new experience this!—the girlish presence of Aspasia filled his mind also to an unacknowledged degree. He felt as if his life had been caught up out of its own vastly different course and suddenly intertwined with that of these two women; the one whose every action, every word, was mysterious to him; and the other, clear to the eye as running water, child-heart, child-soul, impulse elemental, nature itself from her spontaneous laugh to her frank impertinence. "Do you know," whispered Aspasia to him, as they stood side by side under the great colonnade waiting for their turn to descend to the carriage, "I have been hating myself ever since I was such a beast about poor Aunt Rosamond. I think it has half killed her, this business. Even the Runkle wants her to give it up while she’s so ill." The man’s eyes had been lost in a musing contemplation of the rosy pointed face surrounded by diaphanous folds of grey gauze. A dainty figure was Aspasia in her soft greys—the sort of travelling companion a man might gladly take with him through the arid and dusty journey of life. But at these words his singular light gaze kindled. "Surely," said he, "you do not connect Lady Gerardine’s illness with anything that you or I have done? That would be absurd, in the circumstances"—he threw a scornful glance about him—"too absurd a proposition to be entertained for a moment." ("This sensibility in a woman who has consoled herself so quickly and to such good purpose!" he added to himself.) "Oh," said Aspasia back, in a brisk angry whisper, "you don’t understand, and neither do I. But I feel, and you don’t ... and I think you are perfectly hateful!" She had caught his look, followed his thought, and was indignant. * * * * * And now out into the divine Indian evening they set. The travellers, with their crowd of attendants, moved of necessity slowly, for Lady Gerardine went upon her husband’s arm, in the languor of the semi-invalid. Through the frowning gateway, down the stairway they passed, to halt again before the last flight of steps, Rosamond drew herself away from Sir Arthur’s support, leaned up against the rough stone slabs of the wall, and laid a slender gloved hand absently in one of five prints that mark it.