He looked out of the window to see Stella crossing the lawn, a basket on her arm; and he noted afresh the splendid promise of her young form, the grace of her proportions, the perfection of feature and colouring. Truly she was well worth a drastic upheaval of his mode of life, a price that was hardly too high, all things considered. Involuntarily as he watched her, he began to make plans for the future. The big bedroom that overlooked the gardens at Rassih? No, it was not so cool in the hot weather as the one he had hitherto occupied himself, which gave on to the vast desert area at the back of the house. True, his present room held tragic associations; his predecessor in the appointment had committed suicide from the balcony, throwing himself over the parapet down on to the rubbish and scrub far below, where in the night time hyenas and jackals yelled and fought and made diabolical merriment.... And then there was the bathroom door, scarred with sabre cuts and bullet holes, hideous reminders of a mutiny massacre where women and children—— But that all belonged to the past. Stella need never be told of such horrors, nor of the stories of footsteps, and cries, and unaccountable noises—servants' superstitious nonsense that, of course, he scoffed at and suppressed, though sometimes, when the heat kept him awake at night, he had even imagined that he heard them himself.... The drawing-room should be renovated; he had never used it; he would order a piano from Calcutta.
Stella disappeared round the corner of the house, and Colonel Crayfield realised with a sense of mingled triumph and incredulity that he had actually made up his mind, that he had done with all hesitation. And when Robert Crayfield once made up his mind he did not alter it.
A timid cough in the doorway disturbed his reflections. It was Ellen Carrington, driven back to the drawing-room by her mother under pretext that good manners did not permit of a guest being left solitary, unentertained. She fluttered to a seat, prepared to make polite, impersonal conversation; but Colonel Crayfield trampled on the intention.
"Well, and what do you think of it all, Miss Ellen?" he inquired confidentially; at any rate, she seemed to him the most human of the three females. His tone gave her a nice little sense of importance.
"I expect you are right. We may have taken things too seriously. But Stella's conduct did seem very—rather——"
He broke in abruptly. "Can you keep a secret?" And as his companion looked up alarmed, he added, smiling, "Only for a short time?"
"I—I hope I can." She had so little experience of secrets, and the very word "secret" savoured of deceit!
"Well, it's this. I intend to take Stella back with me to India. I intend to marry her."
Ellen gasped. Totally unprepared as she was for such a disclosure, it left her dumbfounded, also vaguely shocked. To her maidenly mind there was something indelicate in the notion of Stella, who was little more than a child, married, and to a man so very much her senior. Oh, dear! In all her bewilderment Colonel Crayfield's voice sounded oddly distant.