The lady guests at Peliti’s--Mrs. Jack Owen and the rest--were giving a tea in the hotel pavilion. They had the band, the wife of the Commander-in-Chief, the governess from Viceregal Lodge and one little Viceregal girl, three A.D.C.’s, one member of council, and the Archdeacon. These were the main features, moving among a hundred or so of people more miscellaneous, who, like the ladies at Peliti’s, had come up out of the seething Plains to the Paradise of the summer capital. The Pavilion overhung the Mall; looking down one could see the coming and going of leisurely Government peons in scarlet and gold, Cashmiri vendors of great bales of embroideries and skins, big-turbaned Pahari horse-dealers, chaffering in groups, and here and there a mounted Secretary-sahib trotting to the Club. Beyond, the hills dipped blue and bluer to the plains, and against them hung a single waving yellow laburnum, a note of imagination. Madeline Anderson was looking at it when Mrs. Mickie and Mrs. Gammidge came up with an affectionate observation upon the cut of her skirt, after which Mrs. Mickie harked back to what they had been talking about before. ‘She’s straight enough now, I suppose,’ this lady said. ‘She goes down. But she gives people a good deal of latitude for speculation.’ ‘Who is this?’ asked Madeline. ‘I ask for information, to keep out of her way. I find I am developing the most shocking curiosity. I must be in a position to check it.’ The ladies exchanged hardly perceptible glances. Then Mrs. Gammidge said, ‘Mrs. Innes,’ and looked as if, for the moment, at any rate, she would withhold further judgment. ‘But you mustn’t avoid the poor lady,’ put in Mrs. Mickie, ‘simply because of her past. It wouldn’t be fair. Besides--’ ‘Her past?’ Madeline made one little effort to look indifferent, and then let the question leap up in her. ‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Gammidge, with brief impatience, ‘he married her in Cairo, and she was--dancing there. Case of chivalry, I believe, though there are different versions. Awful row in the regiment--he had to take a year’s leave. Then he succeeded to the command, and the Twenty-third were ordered out here. She came with him to Lucknow--and made slaves of every one of them. They’ll swear to you now that she was staying at Shepheard’s with an invalid mother when he met her. And now she’s accepted like everybody else; and that’s all there is about it.’ ‘There’s nothing in that,’ said Madeline, determinedly, ‘to prove that she wasn’t--respectable.’ ‘N--no. Of course not,’ and again the eye of Mrs. Gammidge met that of Mrs. Mickie. ‘Though, you see love,’ added the latter lady, ‘it would have been nicer for his people--they’ve never spoken to him since--if she had been making her living otherwise in Cairo.’ ‘As a barmaid, for instance,’ said Madeline, sarcastically. ‘As a barmaid, for instance,’ repeated Mrs. Gammidge, calmly.