The irony of his own anticipations struck Gerrard forcibly after a fortnight or so principally spent in talking about Charteris. Outside the air was filled with wars and rumours of wars, with reports that the Granthi army was moving on Ranjitgarh, or that this or the other Sirdar was about to cut the communications with Agpur, and in the society of James Antony and his intimates these were the topics that everybody discussed. But spending the mid-day hours in the damp heat of the drawing-room, where paper grew mouldy and the covers peeled off books, under the influence of the rains, with Mrs Antony occupied at a discreet distance with reading or letter-writing, Gerrard endured what would have been martyrdom but for the bitter-sweet sense of Honour's presence--possessing which he could not be wholly miserable. Continually there forced itself on him the change in her since the days when they had lamented together the supposed death of Charteris. She was restless, prone to a curious impatience, and the literary interests which had first drawn them together satisfied her no more. Only one explanation could fit the facts. Bob Charteris was not literary in his tastes, and Honour, with her heart awakened, had learnt to know that life was more than books. As the time approached for Gerrard's return to active service, it struck him that she had perceived her unconscious cruelty, and was endeavouring to atone for it. He loved her the better for the thought, though it made him all the more miserable, since the tenderness in her voice, the tears he sometimes surprised in her eyes, must spring from a pity that was not at all akin to love. No doubt, too, she was thinking of Charteris, keeping the field in the rains, and extensively abused on all sides as the cause of the war, and Gerrard would have liked to assure her that he understood, and to prophesy a general revulsion of feeling when the Agpur business had been brought to a successful conclusion. But apparently sympathy was at a discount with Honour, for the slightest attempt to approach the subject--even an honest effort to assure her that Bob's safety should be his first care in the future, for her sake--brought back at once the sense of constraint, and made her manner hard and impatient, not to say snappish. Their final parting took place in public, but this was Gerrard's own fault, for he could not trust himself alone with her. He might have been a weak fool to hang about her for so long, but to offer himself as a bearer of tender messages for Charteris was beyond him. She was very pale, and seemed to find difficulty in speaking, and he guessed at once that she was envying him his good fortune in seeing her lover so soon. But his selfishness in refusing to volunteer as a messenger was rightly punished, for Mrs Jardine, who had seen fit to appear at the Residency to borrow a fancy-work pattern from Mrs Antony, just as he was about to start, was not minded to leave things longer in