"Nay, James, you must do your part. Pray convey my compliments to him, and tell him I shall be sadly vexed if he refuses to come. He shall be in complete retirement there, you may say, and can slip away when he chooses."
"I will give him his orders. Pray, is Miss Cinnamond's name to be mentioned?"
"I think not. I wish I could leave it to your discretion, love, but a fine tact is not one of your shining virtues, is it?"
"No, ma'am." James Antony was not at all aggrieved. "To tell the truth without fear or favour is enough for me."
"Then say nothing. Stay—could you contrive to intimate that Sir Arthur and his lady will be among the company? That should serve to prepare the young man's mind."
"I imagine I am capable of that, my dear."
And in truth, James Antony made the announcement with so much emphasis, and in so meaning a tone, that Gerrard would have been dull indeed had he missed its significance. Before it came he had been fighting against the duty of accepting Mrs Antony's invitation, but now his opposition collapsed suddenly. The rage for charades, which had devastated English society for ten years or more, prevailed also in India, and "Charades and Music" were promised in the corner of this evening's card. The host spoke his mind quite frankly on the nature of the entertainment, which he termed "a set of young fools dressing up and acting silly questions for old fools to answer," and assured Gerrard that he thought no worse of him for holding back. By way of building a bridge for his retreat, however, he informed him that no sight or sound of the charades could reach the dufter, and he wished he himself could spend the evening there with him in peace and quietness. On receiving the tardy acceptance he departed hastily, much pleased with the results of his diplomacy—which would hardly have been the case had he been able to read the young man's mind. One thing had been plain to Gerrard from the first moment in which he realised fully what Charteris's death would mean to him. It set an absolute barrier between Honour and himself. He could no more take advantage of Bob's removal from the field by an accident than if he had slain him with his own hand. Having assured himself of this night and day, in waking and dreaming and semi-delirious moments, it had become such an immutable fact that he felt it was time to make Honour aware of it. He felt an unaccountable pang on realising that she would immediately perceive its reasonableness.
His first visitor in his retirement that evening was not Honour, but Mrs Jardine, who believed honestly that she had a special gift for cheering the sick. Gerrard had always been her favourite of Honour's two persistent suitors, and though she could not well in so many words congratulate him on being left without a rival, there were a good many heartening things that she could and did say. After deprecating any possible embarrassment on his part by assuring him that she came not because she liked him, but because when one had a gift it was a duty to use it, and it was a privilege to turn a gay and too probably heartless occasion of this kind into a means of doing good, she passed to her main object with a suddenness which would have seemed to some a little abrupt.
"And you have not caught one glimpse of a certain young lady yet?" Nods and becks and a mysterious archness of expression pointed the question. "My dear Mr Gerrard, she is handsomer than ever—in her own style, of course; you may take an old woman's word for it."
"But where shall I find the old woman?" inquired Gerrard, in a desperate attempt to do what was expected of him.