“I was born in India,” she said with delightful irrelevance.
“Ah, were your people in the army?”
“No. My father was in the Indian Marine. But he retired when I was two years old—soon after my mother’s death. I lost him eight years later, and, having lived thirteen years with a stepmother, I thought it high time to begin to earn my own living.”
She fancied that this brief biography might encourage him to speak of the Baumgartners, but Warden’s conversation did not run on conventional lines.
“I find your career most interesting,” he said. “Now that we know each other so well I want to hear more of you. Promise that you will write every month until early December, and report progress in your new surroundings. Here is my card. A letter to the Universities Club will always reach me.”
She read:—“Captain Arthur Warden, Deputy Commissioner, Nigeria Protectorate.”
“Why must I stop in December?” she asked, with a smile and a quick glance under her long eyelashes.
“Because I return to Nigeria about that date, and I shall then supply a new address.”
“Dear me! Are we arranging a regular correspondence?”
“Your effusions can be absolutely curt. Just the date and locality, and the one word ‘Happy’ or Miserable,’ as the case may be.”