"And what did Mr. Quentin say?"
"Oh," laughing, "telling Lisle, Sahib plenty rupees got, I poor devil! Mr. Quentin very funny gentleman, making too much bobbery, swearing too much, throwing boots and bottles, no money giving; I plenty fraiding, and so I taking leave," concluded Ibrahim majestically.
This little side-light on Mr. Quentin's manners was a revelation to Mrs. Creery. And so Lisle was really rich! the dinner she had graced at Aberdeen (on a mutton day), had been given at his expense, and all the establishment of servants, coolies, and boatmen had been maintained by him. She pondered much over this discovery—and, marvellous to relate, kept it to herself.
Colonel Denis had now been dead about two months, and his daughter was once more to be seen out of doors, and walking about the island; but how different she looked, what a change a few weeks had made in her appearance. She was clad in a plain black dress, her eyes were dim and sunken, her face was thin and haggard, her figure had lost its nice rounded outlines. She was trying to accustom herself to her new lot in life; to that empty bungalow on the hill-side, that she never passed without a shudder, for did it not represent the wreck of her home?
Something else had also been scattered to the winds, blown away into space like gossamer-web in a gale, I mean that airy fabric known as "Love's Young Dream."
She had been dwelling on four words, more than she herself imagined; on the promise, "I shall come back," breathed under the palm-trees that night, that saw "flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all armed!"
Helen occasionally spent a day with Mrs. Graham or Mrs. Durand; they liked to have her with them, and endeavoured by every means in their power, to distract her mind from dwelling, as it did incessantly, on her recent loss. One morning, as she sat working in Mrs. Durand's cool, shady drawing-room, doing her best to seem interested in her hostess' remarks, they heard some one coming rapidly up the walk, and Captain Durand sprang up the steps, and entered, holding a bundle of letters in his hand.
"The mail is in from Rangoon," he said; "Rangoon and the Nicobars."
If he and his wife had not been wholly engrossed in sorting their correspondence, they would doubtless have noticed, that their young lady guest had suddenly become very red, and then very white, but they were examining their letters, with the gusto of people to whom such things are both precious and rare.