It was not a happy time; no period of transition can be altogether satisfactory to oneself. Being highly strung by temperament, he felt the mental strain more than others, while the complete severance with the old life affected him painfully. Up to this there had always been something to connect him with the past. Jung Bahadoor, Gambier Singh, Dinkur Rao, and the Ranee of Jhansi had all spoken to him of England. Wherever he had been he had seen English faces and heard the English tongue; here he met no one but Indians. Even the Resident was absent. Owing to the death of the late rajah, he had been on duty for some time; his health, he said, was suffering; so, after welcoming the new ruler, he had started with his family to take holiday in a hill-station. At first Tom felt disposed to congratulate himself on this isolation. He remembered what had been said to him on board the 'Patagonia'--that between East and West a great gulf is fixed. If, as he would sometimes imagine, he was to lay the first stone of a bridge to unite them, he must learn to stand firmly on both sides. Then, too, he had little time for vain regrets. He had begun to realise the magnitude of the task that lay before him, and all the energies of his nature were bent on preparing himself for it. The language, the religion, the laws, and social customs of his new country had all to be made separate subjects of study before he could presume to say that he understood its people; while, in addition, there was the duty--peculiarly sacred to him--of finding out what the aims of his predecessors had been, and of looking for and examining any records they had left behind them. But after those first few days, filled to the brim with hard and unremitting toil, there came a sense of want. His old feelings might be stifled, but they were not dead. A dull craving, which he could not formulate, haunted him perpetually. During the night, which was his only time of relaxation from mental labour, there would come to him vivid visions of home, from which he would awake with a sick anguish that brought tears to his eyes and throbs of pain to his heart. Like a nightmare the sense of his isolation would weigh upon him; dear faces from the past would gaze at him reproachfully, and he would stretch out his arms to them with a bitter cry. He could not--he could not let them go.