“Yes, and they will be rather more than lovely just now! Does the name suggest nothing to your mind?”
“You think the floods will be up?” Mrs. Lewin asked startled.
“I think the Rano District will probably be impassable just now, but we will see.” His keen eyes fell on the couple in front of them, who were Mr. Gurney and Miss Denver, and he laughed. “That young lady is a puzzle to the garrison,” he said. “The women cannot decide if she is a bad lot or only a little fool.”
“It is her people’s fault. They let her ride about with the boys stationed here up to twelve at night, and she spends half her time at Mitsinjovy with Mrs. Clayton. What can you expect? Of course people talk. But I think she is quite capable of taking care of herself.”
“I don’t know. This affair with Gurney outshines her former little peccadilloes. She has the worried air of a girl who has been kissed!”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself for knowing such things!” retorted Chum quickly. “Perhaps they are engaged. I know nothing of Mr. Gurney beyond his voice. He may be all right.”
“Or she may be all wrong! I would solve the mystery in three minutes—if I were a bachelor. As things are I do not feel inclined to help to satisfy public curiosity.”
“I don’t like you nearly so well when you talk scandal,” said Mrs. Lewin frankly. “And you so very seldom do it that it jars the more. The girl is not able to defend herself either. Don’t let us attack her without cause.”
There had been ample cause, in so far as a foundation for gossip went, and she knew it in her own mind, even while she defended a fellow-woman. It flashed across her, with a sense of absolute wonder, that she could not imagine such a position as Miss Denver’s—a girl accepted in the social world of the place, asked to people’s houses, and spoken of by men as Major Churton had spoken! Leoline Lewin could not quite realise the tone of mind in Beatrix Denver, if she could allow herself to be handled, not by one man only, but by many, if report spoke truly. She herself had never been kissed by any man until her engagement, and felt that she would have a certain shyness in the admission after other women’s avowed experience. It seemed rather immature, somehow. And yet the mere thought of familiarity, even in her present assured position, appeared an impossibility to her sense of self-valuation. Of course she could not soil her own self-respect by such a thing, though she kept her charity for those who were less particular. Last week, for instance, Di Churton had told her that the very Mrs. Clayton, who was Miss Denver’s chief ally at the Mitsinjovy Garrison, had got the new boy from Natal in tow. He was rather a nice youth named Rennie, as Mrs. Lewin knew him, with little harm as yet in his twenty-one years; but his education had begun in earnest.
“He runs after Mrs. Clayton everywhere,” Diana declared. “She takes him home after the dances, and he unlaces her gowns for her. Brissy Nugent told me so.”