The old Mussulman butler who offered her coffee looked at her with aroused curiosity—here was certainly a memsahib under the favour of God—and as she stirred it, the shadow that Violet Prendergast had thrown upon her life faded out of her mind in the light that was there. Then she looked up and met that lady’s vivid blue eyes. Mrs. Innes’s colour had not returned, but there was a recklessness in the lines of her mouth. In the way she held her chin, expressing that she had been reflecting on old scores, and anticipated the worst. Meeting this vigilance Miss Anderson experienced a slight recoil. Her happiness, she realized, had been brought to her in the hands of ugly circumstance.
‘And so melodramatic,’ she told herself. ‘It is really almost vulgar. In a story I should have no patience with it.’ But she went on stirring her coffee with a little uncontrollable smile.
A moment later she had to contemplate the circumstance that her hostess was addressing her. Mrs. Innes wished to be introduced. Mrs. Innes, incarnate, conscious sensation, was smiling at her, saying that she must know so great a friend of her husband’s. He made so few friends, and she was so grateful to anybody who was good to him. Eyes and voice tolerably in rein, aware of the situation at every point, she had a meretricious daring; and it occurred to Madeline, looking at her, that she was after all a fairly competent second-class adventuress. She would not refuse the cue. It would make so little difference.
‘On the contrary, I am tremendously indebted to Colonel Innes. He has been so very kind about ponies and jhampanies and things. Simla is full of pitfalls for a stranger, don’t you think?’ And Miss Anderson, unclosing her fan, turned her reposeful head a little in the direction of three married schoolgirls voluble on her left.
‘Not when you get to know the language. You must learn the language; it’s indispensable. But of course it depends on how long you mean to stay.’
‘I think I will learn the language,’ said Madeline.
‘But General Worsley told me you were leaving Simla in a fortnight.’
‘Oh no. My plans are very indefinite; but I shall stay much longer than that.’
‘It is Miss Anderson, isn’t it?—Miss Madeline Anderson, of New York—no, Brooklyn?’
Madeline looked at her. ‘Did not the General say so?’ she asked.