In another hour Mr. James Quentin was walking back to the bungalow alone. As he stood on the hill above the pier, and watched the smoke of the departing steamer above the jungle, he felt a curious and unusual sensation, he actually felt,—his almost fossilized conscience told him,—that he had not behaved altogether well to Lisle! Lisle, who had been his friend by deeds, not words; Lisle, who had borne the blow he had dealt him like a man; had never once allowed a word, or allusion that might reflect on Helen, to pass his lips, and had accepted the ring with unquestioning faith. Yes, Lisle, though rather silent and unusually dull (for generally he was such an amusing fellow), had taken his disappointment well. Mr. Quentin, however, rated such disappointments very lightly. Judging others by himself, they were mere pin-pricks at the time, and as such consigned to the limbo of complete oblivion within a week.
"After all," he said aloud, as he slowly strolled back with his hands in his pockets, "I am in reality his best friend! It would never have done for him, to entangle himself with a girl without connections, a girl without a penny, a girl he picked up at the Andamans! Haw! haw! by Jove! how people would laugh! No, no, Gilbert Lisle, you must do better than that; you will have to look a little higher for the future Lady Lingard. I don't suppose she has a brass farthing, and she certainly would not suit my book at all."
Needless to add, that this mirror of chivalry did not return to Port Blair an hour sooner than was his original intention.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE FIRST GRAVE.
"They laid him by the pleasant shore,
And in the hearing of the wave."
Tennyson.
The news about Colonel Denis was only too true! He had started for the ranges on Aberdeen one morning about nine o'clock, as his regiment was going through their annual course of musketry, and as he stood in a marker's butt, close to the targets, a native child from the Sepoy lines suddenly emerged from some unsuspected hiding-place, where she had been lying perdue, and ran right into the open, across the line of fire. Colonel Denis rushed out to drag her into shelter, but just as he seized her, a bullet from a Martini-Henry struck him between the shoulders, and without a groan, he fell forward on his face dead. Yes, he was quite dead when they hurried up to him. The shock to every one was stupefying; they were speechless with horror; but five minutes previously he had been talking to them so cheerfully, and had to all appearances as good a life as any one present,—and now here he lay motionless on his face in the sand, a dark stain widening on his white coat, and a frightened little native child whimpering beside him.
"Instantaneous," said Dr. Malone, with an unprofessional huskiness in his voice, when they brought him running to the spot. "What an awful thing, and no one to blame, unless that little beggar's mother," glancing at the imp, who stared back at the Sahib with all the power of her frightened black eyes. "Poor Denis; but it was just like him,—he never thought of himself." This was his epitaph, the manner in which he met his death, "was just like him."