"And the position is good," suggested Mrs. Stuart feebly.
"Belle doesn't care a fig for position, mamma," snapped up her daughter. "She would have liked one of those barracks by the bazaar where nobody lives."
"We might have got up a scratch dance there," remarked Mildred in tones of regret. "Oh, not now, mamma, of course; but by and by when things got jollier."
"I don't believe they ever will get jollier," came in gloomy prophecy from the rocking-chair, as Belle escaped gladly into the mist and rain. Six weeks, she thought; was it only six weeks since the maddening, paralysing drip, drip, drip of ceaseless raindrops had been in her ears? And yet these experienced in hill-weather spoke cheerfully of another six weeks to come. Would she ever be able to endure being the fifth woman in that ridiculous little room for all those days? What irritated her most was the needlessness of half the petty worries which went to make up the dreary discomfort. The extravagant clinging to the habits of past opulence, the wastefulness, resulting in the want of many things which might have made life more pleasant; the apathy content to grumble and do nothing, while she felt her spirits rise and her cheeks brighten even from her rapid walk through the driving mist. The rain had lessened as she paused to lean over the railings which protected a turn of the road where it was hollowed out from the hill-side; sheer cliff on one side, sheer precipice on the other. Up to her very feet surged the vast grey sea of mist, making her feel as if one more step would set her afloat on its shoreless waste. Yet below that dim mysterious pall lay, she well knew, one of the fairest scenes on God's earth, smiling doubtless in a sunshine in which she had no part. Then suddenly, causelessly, the words recurred to her--"The world is before you yet; it holds life, and happiness, and love." Who had said them? Even now it cost her an effort to remember clearly the events following on the shock of her father's death. The effort was so painful that she avoided it as a rule; but this time the memory of Philip Marsden's kindness came back sharply, and the trivial remorse about the letter rose up once more to take the front place in her regrets until driven thence by one vague, impotent desire to have the past back again. Looking down into the impalpable barrier of cloud through which a pale gleam of light drifted hither and thither, she could almost fancy herself a disembodied spirit striving after a glimpse of the world whence it had been driven by death; so far away did she feel herself from those careless days at Faizapore, from the kindly friends, the--
"Miss Stuart! surely it is Miss Stuart!" cried a man's voice behind her. She turned, to see John Raby, who, throwing the reins of his pony to the groom, advanced to greet her, his handsome face bright with pleasure. His left arm was in a sling, for he had been slightly wounded; to the girl's eyes he had a halo of heroism and happiness round him.
"I am so glad!" she said, "so glad!"
As they stood, hand in hand, a sunbeam struggling through the cloud parted the mist at their feet. Below them, like a jewelled mosaic, lay the Doon bathed in a flood of light; each hamlet and tree, each silver torrent-streak and emerald field, seemingly within touch, so clear and pellucid was the rain-washed air between. Further away, like fire-opals with their purple shadows, flashed the peaks of the Sewaliks, and beyond them shade upon shade, light upon light, the mother-of-pearl plain losing itself in the golden setting of the sky.
"I am in for luck all round," cried John Raby in high delight. "That means a break in the rains, and a fortnight of heaven for me,--if fate is kind--"
But Belle heard nothing; one of those rare moments when individuality seems merged in a vast sympathy with all things visible and invisible was upon her, filling her, body and soul, with supreme content.
"Are you not coming in?" she asked, when, after walking slowly along the Mall, they reached the path which led downward to the little drawing-room and the four women.