rupted him hastily. She was not prepared for this, and not quite in a humour for it. It startled her at the moment more than it pleased her. There were so many people about. The servants were walking in and out of the dining-room behind them; and everything was so public. It was a relief to her to see at this moment Goldney's dog-cart coming up the drive. Oh, there is Mr. Goldney,' she said, as if she had not heard; 'I suppose he is coming to lunch. I must go in.' Guy was only incited by the check. 'Stay one minute,' he said, but she walked on into the dining-room. As she did so he remembered that it was his only chance for the day. In the afternoon there would be the usual gathering for tea, and then church again. Guy was desperate. 'Miss Treveryan,' he said, as he walked in with her, 'I must speak to you. I shall come to-morrow.' Her only answer was a burning blush, which covered her cheeks and forehead and ears as she turned to meet her visitors. Guy could see it mantling into her bright brown hair at the nape of her neck. Goldney saw it too. He was a little surprised at the warmth of his welcome, but he was not deceived by it. It was a warmth born of embarrassment, as he guessed with a pang at his heart.

A few minutes later Colonel Treveryan arrived, bringing the judge with him, and then the luncheon gong sounded. During the meal Guy did not speak to Helen. Oldham and Pitt Wright sat next her, and she talked to the former. But there were only six of them, and once or twice the talk became general. Once he met her eyes, and again she blushed crimson. He saw that it distressed her, and he refrained from speaking to her any more. Directly after lunch she left them. Guy could not resist stopping till tea-time, but it was useless; and when the gathering began he ordered his dog-cart. She shook hands with him when he went, and their eyes met again. Guy knew then that she was not angry with him, but she had cut short his offer, and he knew

no more.

As he drove home he felt disappointed, but he was not altogether unhappy. At all events, Helen did not care for Pitt Wright. That maddening doubt had been laid. Did she care for him? She had not shown much sign of it, but he had hopes. It was clumsy of him to spring a mine upon her like that. Perhaps if he had had a quiet chance it would have been all right At all events, he was now determined to know. The next day should decide.

CHAPTER XIV

SUSPENSE

DALE had spent a fairly cheerful day during Guy's absence. He had done his duty in the morning, and had then gone over and called upon his Colonel's wife and tried to play with Mabs, but Mabs had rather snubbed him. She had not much respect for Chimp. After that he had taken his cheery smile on to Mrs. Dangerfield's, and joined her lunch party. She asked him where Guy was.

'Gone over to church at the Civil station.'

'As usual. We shall have him reading the lessons soon. And on to lunch at the Treveryans', I suppose?'

'I expect so. He said he should stay if they asked him.' 'That girl is a nuisance. I wish she would take the little "Pink 'un" and leave you boys in peace.'

'She is a jolly girl all the same.'

'I daresay, but she is poaching, and I object.'

'I am afraid it's no use, Mrs. Dangerfield. Guy can be pretty obstinate when he chooses.'

'Well, there are some more of you, that's one comfort; only he was about the best. I am sorry he has taken to evil courses.' Dale did not answer, and the subject dropped.

After a very merry lunch the party broke up. For a wonder Dale had been tempted to drink some champagne, a ruinous thing to do in India in the middle of the day, and he felt lazy and bored. He strolled over to his quarters and sat down in Guy's long chair, with his little muscular legs up on the projecting arms.

His dog Jock came in from the compound, where he had been chasing a squirrel. Jock was a queer-looking beast. Dale had

bought him as a puppy under the belief that he was going to be a fox-terrier; but long before he was full-grown it became clear that something had gone wrong. He was leggy, and his coat was rougher and thinner than a fox-terrier's has any right to be. You could see the spots on the skin below. His manners, too, bore unmistakable mark of a plebeian origin. They were the manners of the immortal Crab; he never could be taught the least respect for capons or farthingales. At this moment Jock was covered with yellow dust, and Dale told him he was a dirty little devil, and tried to make him lie down on the floor, which he declined to do. He was a republican sort of dog, affectionate enough in his own way, but thoroughly disobedient. If he did not approve of your orders he trotted off quietly, and went to stay with a friend until you were in a more reasonable frame of mind. Sometimes he would stay away a day or two.

For a few minutes Dale sat quiet, cogitating upon the nature of dogs in general and fox-terriers in particular. He still regarded Jock as a fox-terrier. 'Rummy little beggars,' he thought to himself, 'always chivvying something. Wonder why they can't leave squirrels and things alone.' Then it gradually dawned upon him that he was always chivvying something too. 'I'm blest if we're not rather like that ourselves. Small blame to us either. Life would not be much good if there were no sport to be got.'

Abstruse thought, however, was not Dale's line, and he looked round the room for something to amuse him. His eye fell on a small square table, upon which lay a pile of Guy's books. It was within reach, and he pulled it towards his chair, and turned over the volumes.

'I

'Poetry books,' he said to himself, with a face of disgust. can't make Guy out. He can shoot and ride and play polo and all that, so it's not as if he was an ass and fit for nothing else; and yet he will sit reading this rot by the hour together.' Chimp was not born under a rhyming planet.

He took up a copy of Wordsworth, and opened it at random, and turned over a page or two until he came to a passage Guy had marked. Chimp read it out aloud

A violet by a mossy stone,
Half-hidden from the eye;
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

'That is rather jolly,' he said. He read the preceding verse, and then the last. The closing lines he repeated

But she is in her grave, and O!

The difference to me!

'Well, I suppose, that would make one feel a bit cheap, but I don't see many points in it all the same as poetry. There's no go about it. Besides, any fool could say a thing like that.' After this he looked at Harry Gill, but Wordsworth did not suit him. Drivel,' he said, as he put it down, and opened Shelley. The volume was scored in all directions by Guy's pencil-marks, but to Chimp's mind Guy's admiration was not comprehensible. He looked at bits of The Skylark and The Cloud, and other marked pieces.

The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar

From the sphere of our sorrow.

'Very pretty, I daresay. I don't see the force of it myself. Milton,-oh, that's the old bird who wrote the Allegro, that they made us learn at Bob Sayers's before I went to Harrow. There it is, by Jove! How I hated it, and the other thing, Penseroso; that was worse. It's a beastly shame to make little beggars of ten or eleven learn those hard pieces, all full of Latin names and things, when they can't understand them. I believe that is what set me against poetry. I daresay I should have been no end fond of it if I had had a chance. I like really good poetry awfully

now.'

But hark the cry is Astur, and see the ranks divide,

'I

And the great Lord of Luna comes with his—something—stride; Upon his ample shoulders clangs loud the fourfold shield, And in his hand the mighty brand that none but he can wield. 'That's the sort of thing. That makes you sit up.' He looked for a copy of Macaulay, but it was not there. know he has got it,' Chimp said; 'I have heard him spout it by the yard.' He went back to Milton with a sigh, and made a heroic attempt to read some of Paradise Lost, but he could not. He found a marked passage in Lycidas—

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise,

That last infirmity of noble mind,

To scorn delights and live laborious days.

'Oh, I daresay, old man. I think I see you scorning delights and living laborious days.'

Were it not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?

Beastly untidy of Neæra, but that's more his form just now, poor old chap. It is a dangerous game. If he gets bowled over, won't old Lady Mary cut up rough neither? She's a jolly girl, but I don't expect she's got a bob; and he hasn't got too much. I wish I could give him some.'

Chimp remained in a brown study for a while, thinking of his friend, and his friend's home where he had spent a week the year before; then he returned to his poetry. He opened Coleridge, and skimmed through the Ancient Mariner, and then came upon the Vision of Kubla Khan. He read how Coleridge had composed the poem in his sleep, and how it had been driven out of his head by the man on business from Porlock. What a jolly lie,' Chimp said; 'I bet he got stumped, and did not know how to finish it. Don't wonder either.'

Then he tried Keats, but that was hopeless. The would-be classical pictures seemed to him eminently foolish, as indeed they were; and he did not care for the verse. He managed to read

through Lamia. 'Beastly shame,' he said. 'Why couldn't the old beggar leave them alone? She was not doing any harm, and they were having a real good time. Awful hard luck on both of them.'

and there he

Chimp had reached the bottom of the pile now, found an unpretending little volume in brown. May as well go right through,' he thought. 'Guy will laugh when I tell him I have read the whole lot. Gordon,-Scotchman, I suppose.

All about bonny lasses and wee bit bairns.' He opened the book and read a marked passage

She rose when I hit her, I saw the stream glitter,

A wide scarlet nostril flashed close by my knee,

Between sky and water the Clown came and caught her,

The space that he cleared was a caution to see.

"By George, that's something like.' He read through the piece with keen enjoyment and then turned to the title-page again. 'Gordon,-Adam Lindsay Gordon. I remember now Guy asked me whether I had ever read it.

That's a ripping