'At what hour will the Huzoor please to dine?'
The young man looked at him curiously, feeling that the world was past his comprehension.
'The usual time, I suppose.'
As well this fool as another--as well to-morrow as to-day. Everything was trivial of course, and yet the trivial commonplace interruption had somehow brought home the reality of what had happened to the lad, and his head sank on his crossed arms once more in utter dejection. She might have told him, warned him. Surely when he had promised she might have done so much for his sake, and Dan's--by the way, what was it that Dan had lost and that chattering idiot had brought in with him? George's right hand trembled a little as it reached over the table to take a plain gold locket on a slender gold chain. It was familiar enough to him. Dan wore it day and night, and many a time had George chaffed him about the young woman, so it was no wonder the dear old man had been vexed at the thought of losing it. Losing it? or losing her? In the keen thrust of this thought, the locket slipped through George's fingers, and falling, opened. So it lay, face upwards, while the boy sat staring out into the room blindly, intent on the remembrance that after all it was not a case of whether a man or a woman should suffer; it was one woman or another. The woman he loved or the woman Dan loved. A hundred thoughts beset him, but, analysed, they all resolved themselves to this: his love or Dan's. To save her from even a breath of scandal he was willing to bear the blame; but how could this be without also imperilling Dan's future? No! if the worst came; if he could find no way--yet surely, surely, there must be some way, some simple way--of taking all the responsibility on his shoulders; then she must be brave; she must tell the truth and save this woman whom Dan loved--whose face lay there in the locket. His eyes sought it mechanically----
'Gwen.'
The sound, barely a whisper, scarcely stirred the sodden air. After a while he pushed back his chair slowly and crossed to stand once more looking out over Hodinuggur.
It seemed to have a fascination for him; yet his mind held but one thought--a desire to get away--to find some place where there was neither truth nor lies, where he need say nothing--need think nothing. That surely would settle it.
'No, you wouldn't, old chap, not unless you wanted them to believe you guilty.' Lewis Gordon's idle words as they had stood laughing and jesting on the balcony yonder but a few months ago came back to him; the only real, living memory in the chaos of his present pain. The scene reproduced itself before his haggard young eyes. Yes! that would settle it; and after all he was guilty. Why had he not told the Colonel? why had he slept? why----
The sound was louder this time; yet not loud enough to disturb the servants, chattering across in the cook-room over the chances of perquisites under the new régime. Loud enough, for all that, to deafen the lad's ears for ever to questionings of truth or untruth.
He lay on his back, face upwards, and a faint stream of blood oozing from the blue bruise just over his heart traced a fine girdle round his breast; perhaps to show that the potter's thumb had slipped, and the pot had cracked in the firing.