‘Do,’ she said, and looked at his capable, sensitive hand as he laid it on the side of her little carriage. Miss Anderson had not the accomplishment of palm-reading, but she took general manual impressions. She had observed Colonel Innes’s hand before, but it had never offered itself so intimately to her inspection. That, perhaps, was why the conviction seemed new to her, as she thought ‘He is admirable--and it is all there.’ When they got to the level Mall he kept his hold, which was a perfectly natural and proper thing for him to do, walking alongside; but she still looked at it. ‘I have heard your good news,’ she said, smiling congratulation at him. ‘My good news? Oh, about my wife, of course. Yes, she ought to be here by the end of the month. I thought of writing to tell you when the telegram came, and then I--didn’t. The files drove it out of my head, I fancy.’ ‘Heavy day?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, absently. They went along together in an intimacy of silence, and Madeline was quite aware of the effort with which she said: ‘I shall look forward to meeting Mrs. Innes.’ It was plain that his smile was perfunctory, but he put it on with creditable alacrity. ‘She will be delighted. My wife is a clever woman,’ he went on, ‘very bright and attractive. She keeps people well amused.’ ‘She must be a great success in India, then.’ ‘I think she is liked. She has a tremendous fund of humour and spirits. A fellow feels terribly dull beside her sometimes.’ Madeline cast a quick glance at him, but he was only occupied to find other matters with which he might commend his wife. ‘She is very fond of animals,’ he said, ‘and she sings and plays well--really extremely well.’ ‘That must be charming,’ murmured Madeline, privately iterating, ‘He doesn’t mean to damn her--he doesn’t mean to damn her.’ ‘Have you a photograph of her?’ ‘Quantities of them,’ he said, with simplicity. ‘You have never shown me one. But how could you?’ she added in haste; ‘a photograph is always about the size of a door nowadays. It is simply impossible to keep one’s friends and relations in a pocketbook as one used to do.’ They might have stopped there, but some demon of persistence drove Madeline on. She besought help from her imagination; she was not for the moment honest. It was an impulse--an equivocal impulse--born doubtless of the equivocal situation, and it ended badly. ‘She will bring something of the spring out to you,’ said Madeline--‘the spring in England. How many years is it since you have seen it? There will be a breath of the cowslips about her, and in her eyes the soft wet of the English sky. Oh, you will be very glad to see her.’ The girl was well aware of her insincerity, but only dimly of her cruelty. She was drawn on by something stronger than her sense of honesty and humanity, a determination to see, to know, that swept these things away. Innes’s hand tightened on the rickshaw, and he made at first no answer. Then he said: