VIII
BEFORE THE RACE
Hope had arranged to go to the races with Mrs. Latimer after previously lunching with her.
When the day arrived she spent the morning working on the veranda in the sunshine. It was a perfect day of Indian winter, and under its influence she gradually forgot her anxieties, and fell to dreaming while she worked.
Down below the compound she heard the stream running swiftly between its banks, with a bubbling murmur like half-suppressed laughter. It was fuller than she had ever known it. The rains had swelled the river higher up the valley, and they had opened the sluice-gates to relieve the pressure upon the dam that had been built there after the disastrous flood that had drowned the English girl years before.
Hope loved to hear that soft chuckling between the reeds. It made her think of an English springtime. The joy of spring was in her veins. She turned her face to the sunshine with a smile of purest happiness. Only two months more to the zenith of her happiness!
There came the sound of a step on the veranda—a stumbling, uncertain step. She turned swiftly in her chair, and sprang up. Ronnie had returned to prepare for the race, and she had not heard him. She had not seen him before that day, and she felt a momentary compunction as she moved to greet him. And then—her heart stood still.
He was standing a few paces away, supporting himself against a pillar of the veranda. His eyes were fixed and heavy, like the eyes of a man walking in his sleep. He stared at her dully, as if he were looking at a complete stranger.