"Hush! let me break it to her," said Lady Antony, as Marian's pretty sparkling face, the eyes wide with astonishment, appeared at the window. "Dear Marian," she took the girl's arm and led her back into the room, "I have something to say to you." "What was it--cholera?" Honour was asking with dry lips of Sir Edmund as they stood on the verandah. "No, unfortunately." Honour's eyes met his in perplexity. "It was murder. This morning I received news that Captain Cowper and Mr Nisbet had been wounded in a street-tumult at Agpur, but that Cowper's injuries were so slight he did not wish his wife alarmed about them. To-night your father sends a runner to say that the poor fellows were pursued and murdered outside the city." "How dreadful!" was all Honour could say. "Dreadful indeed," said Sir Edmund gloomily. "I have no doubt that Sher Singh will be able to clear himself of any complicity in the crime, but I fear he must have shown culpable weakness. And weakness is difficult to distinguish from wickedness at a time when men's passions are excited, as they are bound to be by this news." "But what does it signify about Sher Singh? It is poor Charles we have to think of, and poor, poor Marian!" cried Honour indignantly. Sir Edmund's eyes looked beyond her. "Pardon me; we have the whole question of the treatment of native states, the whole principle of justice to the native, to think of. Eyes blinded by the natural, though unholy, desire for revenge are little fitted to see clearly. There is grave reason to fear that even now hasty steps have been taken, which may compromise our future action. I understand that young Charteris crossed the frontier, or was about to cross it, on the news of the outbreak. My brother reports that he has ordered him to return immediately, but it is almost impossible that the harm has not been done." "What harm?" demanded Honour. "Mr Charteris hoped to save poor Charles, of course. Then, when he knew he was too late for that, he would try to rescue his body." Sir Edmund looked at her with a kind of despair for her feminine obtuseness. "That is quite out of the question," he said, "and Charteris knows it. If he went on, it would be----" "You don't mean that Marian will never know where her husband is buried--never be able to visit his grave?" "It is highly probable. My dear young lady, what can it signify where our vile bodies lie? They are in God's keeping, whether cast out on the face of the ground or laid in a churchyard at home." "Oh, don't!" Honour could have shaken Sir Edmund. "Can't you see? Oh, please don't say anything of that kind to Marian, as if she had not enough to bear already." "I do not think I introduced the subject----"