'Isn't she rather young?' said some one in answer.
'Oh! it isn't that,' replied the first voice, 'I mean that I couldn't take a child to Cawnpore. I should always be thinking of the well!'
Always thinking of the well!
The words brought home to Lesley Drummond in an instant--a never-to-be-forgotten instant--that something which so often chills the golden glory of the Eastern sunshine, that vision of the sentinel of memory which, for both races, bars the door of reconciliation that might otherwise stand open for comradeship.
She had read books on that past tragedy, she had told herself that it was past, that it should be forgotten; and now--
'Drink your tea sharp!' said Nevill Lloyd with kindly familiarity, 'or you'll be getting ague. That's the worst of this beastly hole. It's always in extremes. Hot as blazes one moment, chill as charity----' He paused, for the iron hand beneath the parti-coloured velvet and brocade glove of India was resolved to have the girl in its grip at once, and a rattling thud, followed by a dull reverberation, rose from the near distance, making more than one in the chattering crowd pause also, until the sound came again, when the pause ended cheerfully in fresh chatter.
'It's a funeral,' explained Nevill Lloyd in answer to Lesley's look. 'The cemetery is close to the course, and enteric is shocking bad in barracks just now. Young Summers of ours is down with it, too. Awful ill, poor chap--couldn't be worse, I'm afraid.'
A lady, passing, turned to listen, and, as she went on, said to her companion in a whisper, 'I do hope they won't have to put off the ball to-night--I've got such a jolly new dress from Paris for it.'
Another vision came to Lesley, the vision of a dead lad and a Paris dress.
'Come for a turn--you're positively shivering,' said Captain Lloyd concernedly.