"Why, he was sent up to help Tika Singh in pacifying the hill tracts--or rather, to keep him from perpetrating a massacre and calling it pacification--and Murid-ud-din's widow and family had taken refuge there. I don't know how the trick was done, but I daresay Tika Singh had a finger in the pie. He had taken a fancy to Arbuthnot, and may have wished to get a hold over him--at any rate, the bold Horace made definite proposals. Then the thing came to Antony's ears--Tika Singh may have had a hand in that too--and the fat was in the fire. He sent up orders--to Tika Singh, mind you--to send Arbuthnot down under arrest forthwith, and so nip his matrimonial project in the bud. Now it so happened--the course of true love running smooth for once--that Antony's letter reached Tika Singh on the eve of a great festival, and of course he couldn't possibly open it. But he took a squint inside, or the messenger told him the drift of it, or something, and by some most regrettable leakage the contents got to Arbuthnot's ears. The fellow is like you, Bob; he don't let the grass grow under his feet. He married the lady that night by Mohammedan rites under the auspices of her mother, who was highly in favour of the match, and they set off post-haste for Gajnipur. Another remarkable coincidence--only the day before Tika Singh had given Arbuthnot a duplicate of his own signet, which would carry him anywhere in Bala. Antony's orders had been confidential, so that they got to Gajnipur and were married by the Padri there before the truth got out." "I don't envy that Padri," said Charteris. "Nor I. Antony would have declared himself Pope of Granthistan if that would have enabled him to invalidate the marriage, but the younger Begum is indubitably Mrs Arbuthnot, and means to remain so. So Antony has packed them both back to the hill tracts, with the intimation that Arbuthnot may consider himself permanently relegated to the society of his new relations and his kind friend Tika Singh." "Which means utter and absolute ruin, of course. Well, I call it uncommon hard." "I don't know. Suppose Antony had written, 'Return to your sorrowing chief, and all shall be forgiven,' and done the heavy father business when they turned up, and set both Mrs Antonys and Lady Cinnamond to call on the Begum Arbuthnot, what would it have been but an encouragement to other fellows to go and do likewise?" "Will the fellow find it worth it, I wonder? Funny thing what a difference a woman can make in a man's life." Gerrard assented with almost a groan. "She plays the very mischief sometimes. Bob, I can't help thinking that perhaps you were right when you suggested we had better agree to give up all thoughts of her, both of us."