“Why, you have broken your whip!” The words reached her ears at last. “Never mind, you shall have the best in Bombay as soon as it can come up here. You see what I mean, little girl, don’t you?” “Oh yes,” said Mabel drearily. “You forbid me ever to ride with any one but you, or to speak to a man under seventy.” “Mabel!” he cried, deeply hurt, “can you really misjudge me so cruelly?” “It’s not that,” she said, kneeling down beside him with a sudden burst of frankness. “I know how fond you are of me, and I can’t tell you how grateful and ashamed it makes me. But you don’t understand things. You want to treat me like a baby, and I have been grown-up a long, long time. Think what I have gone through since I came here, even.” “I know, I know!” he said hoarsely. “Don’t speak of it, my dearest! The thought of that evening in the nullah comes upon me sometimes at night, and turns me into an abject coward. I mean to take you away where you will be safe, and have no anxieties.” “Then have you never any anxieties? Because they will be mine.” “No,” he said, with something of sternness, “my anxieties shall never touch my wife. I want to shake off my worries when I leave the office, and come home to find you in a perfect house, with everything round you perfectly in keeping, the very embodiment of rest and peace, sitting there in a perfect gown, long and soft and flowing, for me to feast my eyes upon.” He lingered lovingly over the contemplation of this ideal picture, to the details of which Mabel listened with a cold shudder. “My dear Eustace,” she said brusquely, to hide her dismay, “please tell me how you think the house and the servants are to be kept perfect, if I do nothing but trail round and strike attitudes in a tea-gown?” She caught his wounded look, and went on hastily, “And what did you mean by that invidious glance you cast at my habit? I won’t have my things sniffed at.” “It’s so horribly plain,” pleaded the culprit. “And why not?” demanded Mabel, touched in her tenderest point. “I’m sure it’s most workmanlike.” “That’s just it. Workmanlike--detestable! Why should a woman want to wear workmanlike clothes? All her things ought to be like that gown you wore at the Gymkhana, looking as if a touch would spoil them.” “I shall remind you of this in future, you absurd man!” laughed Mabel, regaining her cheerfulness as she thought she saw a way of establishing her point; “but please remember, once for all, that I shall choose my clothes myself--and they will be suitable for various occasions, for business as well as pleasure. Your part will only be to admire, and to pay.” There was a seriousness in her tone which belied the jesting words. Surely he would understand, he must understand, that there was a principle at stake.