"No need for you to move yet, Brian," urged his aunt, "on such a night as this; I hate the idea of going to bed; I prefer to sit, and laze, and talk, and listen."
"All right, then, I'll stop for half-an-hour. Oh, I say, Uncle Tom, I'd like to hear something more about that chap Chandos. Is it not extraordinary, a man of his class, and who has been in the Service, settling down here for life, with a half-caste family, and working in the sugar factory?"
"It would seem a great deal more extraordinary, if you knew as much about him as I do," rejoined Mr. Lepell, as he lit another cheroot, crossed his legs, and evidently prepared for narration.
"Why, Tom, I never dreamt that you knew his past," exclaimed his wife. "How close you have been all these years."
"Oh, but I was never personally acquainted with him, I merely saw him two or three times, but I heard the story. It made rather a stir some eight-and-twenty years ago. He is not aware that I am behind the scenes, and I've not been anything more to him than what you see. In the first place, he would resent any intimacy based on such reminiscences, and, secondly, his family are quite impossible; I'd far rather have to do with the Cavalhos than the Chandos lot, with their pretensions and struggling and greed."
"But tell us more about Mr. Chandos," reiterated his nephew. "I bar the family, too."
"Well, you would never suppose, that that thin, worn man, with a melancholy face and downcast air, was one of the cheeriest and best-looking fellows in the Service, and mad about balls, and racing, and sport. When I saw him win the Cup at Lucknow, what an ovation he got! I little anticipated the hero of that day would become my sub-manager, and that the irresistible Adonis, in a blue satin jacket, would develop into a haggard, gaunt automaton, in patched khaki, whose horizon is limited to cane fields, his topics to sacks and sugar mills, goor and fuel. A man who calls me 'sir,' and touches his hat to me daily."
"Now I understand, Tom—why you overlook his irregularity, and——"
Her husband interposed with a gesture of his hand.
"This Manora has proved his harbour of refuge; here he has been anchored for eighteen years, here he will remain, till the end of the chapter. I mean his chapter."