"No. I thought it was Mrs. Ratcliffe. Max writes an abominable fist."

She seemed relieved. "Yes, I have come to take care of him. He never takes care of himself."

"And you know how to make him do as he is told?" asked Noel.

She smiled. "Oh, yes, I am quite capable. It isn't the first time I have taken care of him. We are very old pals."

"I envy you both," said Noel. "Is this what you are looking for?"

He had spied a ring under the edge of Peggy's biscuit-plate. He held it out to her with a graceful flourish.

But at this point Peggy, who had begun to feel neglected, overcame her shyness and shrilly intervened.

"Noel, that's not the way! You should say, 'With this ring--'"

"Peggy!" Noel interrupted, "you're going too fast. I'm much too old to travel at that pace. I will say good-night to you before you get me into trouble."

He stooped to kiss her, but Peggy was clinging like a marmoset round his neck when he stood up again. His brown face laughed through her curls.

"We're a horribly spoony couple," he said to Olga. "We've known each other just six weeks, and we got engaged to-day."

"Do you often get engaged like that?" asked Olga.

"Oh, rather!" said Noel. "It's much more fun than getting married.

Cheaper too, and not so monotonous!" Again he laughed. "I a.s.sure you it's the easiest thing in the world to get engaged. Never tried it?"

It was unpardonably audacious; but that was Noel Wyndham's way, and somehow no one ever took offence.

Olga did not take offence, but she winced ever so slightly; a fact which Noel obviously failed to observe, being occupied with the difficult task of releasing himself from Peggy's ardent embraces.

When he finally obtained his freedom and stood up, Olga had pa.s.sed out again into the pa.s.sage. He threw a last kiss to his small sweetheart, and hurried after her.

CHAPTER III

THE NEW LIFE

"It isn't in the least what I thought it would be," said Olga.

"Nothing ever is," said Nick.

He was sprawling on a _charpoy_ on the verandah of their new abode, smoking a cigarette with lazy enjoyment.

Though within sound of the native city, their bungalow stood well outside. It was surrounded by a compound of many tangled shrubs that gave it the appearance of being more isolated than it actually was. Not so very far away from it, down in the direction of Will Musgrave's growing reservoir, there stood a _dak_-bungalow; and immediately beyond this were corn-fields and the native village that cl.u.s.tered along the edge of the river. The cantonments were well out of sight, more than a mile away along the dusty road, further than the polo-ground and race-course.

Behind the bungalow, approached only through a dense ma.s.s of tall jungle gra.s.s, stretched the jungle, mile upon mile of untamed wilderness, home of wild pig and jackals, monkeys and flying foxes. Very quiet by day was that long dark tract of jungle, but at night strange voices awoke there that seemed to Olga like the crying of unquiet spirits. Neither by day nor night did she feel the smallest desire to explore it.

The native city of Sharapura held infinitely greater fascinations for her. Some of its buildings were beautiful, and she was keenly interested in its inhabitants. She never entered it, however, save under Nick's escort. He was very insistent upon this point, and he would never suffer her to linger in the long, narrow bazaar, with its dim booths and crafty, peering faces.

Down by the river there was a mosque about which pigeons circled and cooed perpetually, but beggars were so plentiful all round it that it was next to impossible to pause near the spot without being beset on all sides, a matter of real regret to the English girl, who longed to wander or stand and admire at will.

In His Excellency the Rajah she was frankly disappointed. He had been educated in England, and had acquired a patronizing condescension of demeanour which she found singularly unattractive. He never treated her with familiarity, but she did not like the look of his dusky eyes. They always smiled, but to her there was something unpleasant behind the smile. In her private soul she deemed him treacherous.

He invariably wore European costume, with the exception of his green turban with its flowing puggaree. He was an excellent and graceful horseman, and spoke English with extreme fluency.

Nick spent a good many hours of every day at the Palace, and they were always on the best terms; yet Olga never saw him go without a pang of anxiety or return without a thrill of relief.

Probably her recent severe illness had had a lasting effect upon her nerves, for she was never easy in his absence, though Daisy Musgrave did much to rea.s.sure her. She had taken Olga under her wing as naturally as though they had been related, and they were much together.

The old life had begun to seem very far away to Olga, her childhood as remote as a half-forgotten dream. The blank s.p.a.ce in her memory remained as a patch of darkness through which her thread of life had run indeed but of which no record remained. She had ceased to attempt to read the riddle, half in dread and half in sheer helplessness. It did not seem to matter. Surely, as Max had once said to her, nothing mattered that was past.

She did not spare much thought for Max either just then, instinctively avoiding all mention of him. She had a vague consciousness that was more in the nature of a nightmare memory than an actual happening, that they had parted in anger. Sometimes there would rush over her soul the recollection of piercing green eyes that searched and searched and would not spare, and her heart would beat in a wild dismay and she would shrink in horror from the vision. But it was not often that this came to her now. She had learned to ward it off, to put away the past, to live in the present.

For nearly a month she had been established with Nick in the bungalow on the outskirts of the city, and the novelty of things had begun to wear off. She was not strong enough to go out very much, and beyond a few calls with Nick and a dinner or two at the cantonments she had not seen much of the social life of Sharapura.

That night, however, they were to attend a State dinner at the Palace, to which all the officers of the battalion and their wives had been bidden. Olga was relieved to know that the Musgraves were also going, for at present she was intimate with no one else, with the possible exception of Noel, who visited them in a fashion which he described as "entirely unofficial" almost every day. He seemed to entertain a vast admiration for Nick, and as Olga was wholly in sympathy with him on this great point, they did not find it difficult to agree upon smaller matters. She even bore with his bare-faced Irish compliments, mainly because she knew he did not mean them and she found it easier to be amused than offended.

The new life was undeniably one of considerable interest, and now and then, more particularly when she went for her morning ride with Nick--a function which Noel almost invariably attended when off duty, appearing with a brazen smile and not the faintest suggestion of an excuse--the old zest would awake within her, almost deluding her into the belief that her lost youth had returned.

She still had her hours of depression and strange heart-heaviness so alien to her nature, and even in her lighter moments she was far more restrained than of yore--shrewd still, quick of understanding still, but infinitely graver, more womanly, more reserved.

Nick, who watched her as tenderly as a mother, sometimes asked himself if after all he and Jim had done the right thing. Her remoteness worried him. She seemed to live in a world of her own, asking no questions, making no confidences. Not that she ever barred him out. He was well aware that she had not the vaguest desire to keep him at a distance. But her old spontaneity, her child-like demonstrativeness, seemed to have gone, and a nameless shadow haunted the eyes that once had been so clear.

They often sat together on the verandah as now, when the day's work was done, sometimes talking, sometimes silent, always in complete accord.

Olga's remark that the India to which Nick had introduced her was wholly unlike her expectations had been called forth by some comment of his upon the Rajah's exceedingly British tastes.

"I thought things would be much more primitive," she said.

And Nick laughed, and after a long draught of whisky and soda observed that possibly they were more primitive than she imagined. After which he stretched himself luxuriously, and asked her if she were aware that they were within a week of Christmas Day.

"Of course," she said. "Did you imagine I had forgotten? It seems so strange to have nothing to do."

He sat up very abruptly with his knees drawn up to his chin and blinked at her with extreme rapidity. "Olga," he said, "I believe you're homesick."

The colour that of old had been so quick to rise faintly tinged her face as she shook her head. "Oh, no, Nick! Don't be absurd! How could I be, with you?"

"I'm not absurd--on this occasion," returned Nick.

"It's the fashion for absentees to be homesick all the world over at Christmas-time. However, we are not bound to follow the fashion. How are we going to celebrate the occasion? Have you any ideas to put forward?"

"None, Nick."

He nodded. "That makes it all the easier for me. Shall we give a picnic at Khantali--you and I? It won't be much f.a.g for you if you drive over with Daisy Musgrave. Noel can take most of the provisions in his dog-cart. He's a useful youngster. How does that strike you? There is a ruined temple or a mosque at Khantali, I believe, and you like that sort of thing."

He paused. She was listening with far-away eyes. "Yes, I shall like that," she said. "It is very nice of you to think of it."