The wish was gone, however, and Mona was watching her friends. A woman must be plain indeed if she is not to look pretty in becoming evening dress; and Doris, in her soft grey silk, looked like a Christmas rose in the mists of winter. She was talking brightly and eagerly, and the Sahib was listening with a smile that made his homely face altogether delightful. Mona wondered whether in all his honest life he had ever looked at any other woman with just that light in his eyes. "What a lucky man he will be who wins my Doris!" she said to herself; and close upon that thought came another. "They say matchmakers are apt to defeat their own ends, but if one praises the woman to the man, and abuses the man to the woman, one must at least be working in the right direction."
With a burst of harmony the band began a new waltz.
"Our dance, Miss Maclean," said the Sahib, coming up to her. "We are going to wander off to some far-away committee-room and swop confidences."
"It sounds nice, but my confidences are depressing."
"So are mine rather. Do you like this part of the world?"
"Do I like myself, in other words? Not much."
"Don't be philosophical. When all is said, there is nothing like gossip. I don't like this part of the world; in fact, I don't know myself in it; it is a fast, frivolous, imbecile world!"
"Socially speaking, I presume, not geographically. At least, those are not strictly the adjectives I should apply to my surroundings. How come you to be in such a world?"
"Oh, I met Kirkhope a few years ago. He was indulging in a fashionable run across India, and he ran up against me. I was able to put him up to a thing or two, and last month when I met him in Edinburgh, he invited me down. In a weak moment I accepted his invitation, and now you see Fortune has been kinder to me than I deserve."
"I saw you in Edinburgh as I went through one day," said Mona, and she told him she had been disappointed not to be able to speak to him at the station.