Pending the decision of the Government, Nehal Singh, now Steven Caruthers, was held prisoner in the club-house he had built two years before. Part of the returned regiment was encamped about the surrounding gardens, in order to prevent all attempt at rescue, but the precaution was a mere formality. Visitors came constantly. There was not a man in all the Station who was not anxious to help bury the past and to hold out the hand of friendship to one whom at the bottom of their hearts they had once wronged and slighted. Among them Carmichael and Nicholson were the chief. They passed many hours of each day with him, and worked steadily and enthusiastically for his pardon and release. He was touched and grateful, but beneath his gratitude there still lurked the demon of unrest. She had not come--the one being for whom he waited--she had sent no word. He knew that her mother lay dying--above all things he knew that on the great day of the attack she had stood resolutely between him and death--but nothing, no explanation or assurance, calmed the hidden trouble of his mind. After all, it had been pity--or remorse--not love. Thus three weeks passed. The Colonel had spent the day with him discussing the future, arranging for the transference of Lois' fortune into his unwilling hands, and now, toward nightfall, he was once more alone, wearied in body and soul. For the first time since his surrender his sense of quiet and release from an immense burden was gone. He was still alone. He felt now that he would always be alone, for there was but one who could fill the blank in his life. And she had not come. He did not and could not blame her. Who was he that a woman should join her lot to his? An Englishman truly, but one over whose birth and youth there hung a shadow, perhaps a curse such as had darkened his mother's life and the life of all those in whose veins there flows an alien blood. She must not even think that any link from the past bound her. She must be free--quite free to choose. Wearily he seated himself at his table and took his pen. "You have been the great guiding light of my life," he wrote to her. "You will always be, because I can not learn to forget. But for you it would be easier and better to forget. You will be happier--" And then he heard the door open, and she stood before him. The words that he had meant to write rushed to his lips, but no further. Moved by a common impulse, they advanced to meet each other, and the next moment she was in his arms. Neither spoke. It seemed as though, once face to face, there could be no doubts, no misunderstandings between them. Their love was wordless, but it had spoken in a silence more eloquent, more complete than words could ever have been. "I could not come before," she said, after a little. "I could not leave her. She was only at peace when I held her hand. She was very happy at the last--now it is all over."