“I had to come as I was, Captain Ballantyne,” he said, “for I have only with me what I want for the night in the train.”

“Of course.  That’s all right,” Ballantyne replied with a great cordiality.  He turned towards Stella.  “Mr. Thresk, this is my wife.”

Now she had to turn.  She held out her right hand but she still covered her throat with her left.  She gave no sign of recognition and she did not look at her visitor.

“How do you do, Mr. Thresk?” she said, and went on quickly, allowing him no time for a reply.  “We are in camp, you see.  You must just take us as we are.  Stephen did not tell me till a minute ago that he expected a visitor.  You have not too much time.  I will see that dinner is served at once.”  She went quickly to one of the grass-screens and lifting it vanished from his view.  It seemed to Thresk that she had just seized upon an excuse to get away.  Why? he asked himself.  She was nervous and distressed, and in her distress she had accepted without surprise Thresk’s introduction to her as a stranger.  To that relationship then he and she were bound for the rest of his stay in the Resident’s camp.

Mrs. Repton had been wrong when she had attributed Thresk’s request for a formal introduction to Ballantyne to a plan already matured in his mind.  He had no plan, although he formed one before that dinner was at an end.  He had asked for the letter because he wished faithfully to follow her advice and see for himself.  If he called upon Stella he would find her alone; the mere sending in of his name would put her on her guard; he would see nothing.  She would take care of that.  He had no wish to make Ballantyne’s acquaintance as Mrs. Ballantyne’s friend.  He could claim that friendship afterwards.  Now however Stella herself in her confusion had made the claim impossible.  She had fled—­there was no other word which could truthfully describe her swift movement to the screen.

Ballantyne however had clearly not been surprised by it.

“It was a piece of luck for me that I camped here yesterday and telegraphed for my letters,” he said.  “You mentioned in your note that you had only twenty-four hours to give to Chitipur, didn’t you?  So I was sure that you would be upon this train.”

He spoke with a slow precision in a voice which he was careful—­or so it struck Thresk—­to keep suave and low; and as he spoke he moved towards the dinner-table and came within the round pool of light.  Thresk had a clear view of him.  He was a man of a gross and powerful face, with a blue heavy chin and thick eyelids over bloodshot eyes.

“Will you have a cocktail?” he asked, and he called aloud, going to the second passage from the tent:  “Quai hai!  Baram Singh, cocktails!”

The servant who had met Thresk at the door came in upon the instant with a couple of cocktails on a tray.

“Ah, you have them,” he said.  “Good!”

But he refused the glass when the tray was held out to him, refused it after a long look and with a certain violence.