"Nevertheless, we have met." She glanced across at Radcliffe who chuckled with boyish self-consciousness. "I paid Major Tristram a visit," she added.
"At Heerut?"
"Well, we had tea there—but we met by the river. Major Tristram had been bathing."
Anne Boucicault sat very straight and still and hard-eyed. Meredith saw that her hands were clenched so that they were white at the knuckles, and again he felt the passing of a sudden emotion which was this time a mingling of inexplicable pain and dread.
"That must have been an unusual—dangerous adventure," Anne uttered from between stiff lips.
"I had hoped that it might be—it proved to be nothing but a very agreeable afternoon," was the answer.
The dialogue passed unnoticed. Mrs. Brabazone was telling one of her only three stories, and trying to sort out the point. Gaya listened and waited reverently, and Mrs. Brabazone, being possessed of a fine sense of her own total lack of humour, finished with a round fat laugh which added a perfecting touch to her rotund figure and creaseless, elderly face.
"Anyhow, I do amuse you," she said triumphantly. "Nobody amuses you like I do. I don't believe you could get on without me. One of these days I shall have that story right, and then you'll see that it was worth waiting for it. You know, I always mix it up with the one about the Lancashire woman who——" She stopped, her mouth agape. "What on earth was that?" she demanded sharply.
"Firing," Mary Compton answered. She raised herself from her comfortable lounging attitude on the long chair, and leant forward with a curious expression on her alert face. "What was it, Mr. Radcliffe?"
The boy got up hurriedly, ostensibly to refill his neighbour's empty glass. His fresh-coloured face, not yet burnt with the Indian sun, had turned a dull red.