Meanwhile, Mrs. Greaves was on her way, in the rain and the wind, to the station. "If history doesn't repeat itself," she was reflecting in anxious forebodement, "I shall be very thankful, but very much surprised." When she got home she informed her husband that Ellen Munro was even a greater fool than she had always believed her to be. "What has she been doing now?" he inquired, without particular interest. "She has allowed Trixie to get engaged to that Coventry man we knew a hundred years ago in India. He is old enough to be her father, and he divorced his wife for nothing, and never bothered himself afterwards as to what became of her when the other man didn't marry her." "Coventry? But he wasn't at all a bad sort of fellow!" said Colonel Greaves. "As straight as they make 'em, and such a good shot, if that is the man you mean. I remember his wife. Now _she_ was a fool, if you like; he was far too good for her." "You men always stick up for each other," protested his wife. "No doubt you are as ready to praise that horrible man who ruined poor Mrs. Coventry's life. I can't remember his name at this moment." Colonel Greaves wisely made no reply. CHAPTER VIII INDIA Up country in India spring is a period of conflicting impressions. The sharp--sometimes almost too sharp--bite of the cold season has yielded to a warm and languorous atmosphere, perfumed powerfully with mango blossom; dew still beads the grass at dawn; English flowers luxuriate, impelled to rarer bloom and fragrance. There comes a sense of ease and peace, and scented calm, that would be blissful but for the lurking knowledge that the sun is only just withholding the full fierceness of his power--giving "quarter," as it were--till preparations are complete to resist the trials of the true hot weather. Fans and punkahs must be fixed and hung, mosquito curtains washed and mended, screens of sweet kus-kus root made ready for the doorways, supplies of captive quail and teal laid in to tempt the jaded palate, when all day long the hot west wind would scorch and shrivel everything outside the darkened houses, and the temperature might stand as high at midnight as at noon.