A long silence followed upon his words.  Jane Repton turned to the mantelshelf and moved an ornament here and another one there.  She had contemplated this very consequence of Thresk’s journey to Chitipur.  She had actually worked for it herself.  She was frank enough to acknowledge that.  None the less his announcement, quietly as he had made it, was a shock to her.  She did not, however, go back upon her work; and when she spoke it was rather to make sure that he was not going to act upon an unconsidered impulse.

“It will damage your career,” she said.  “Of course you have thought of that.”

“It will alter it,” he answered, “if she comes to me.  I shall go out of Parliament, of course.”

“And your practice?”

“That will suffer too for a while no doubt.  But even if I lost it altogether I should not be a poor man.”

“You have saved money?”

“No.  There has not been much time for that, but for a good many years now I have collected silver and miniatures.  I know something about them and the collection is of value.”

“I see.”

Mrs. Repton looked at him now.  Oh, yes, he had thought his proposal out during the night journey to Bombay—­not a doubt of it.

“Stella, too, will suffer,” she said.

“Worse than she does now?” asked Thresk.

“No.  But her position will be difficult for awhile at least,” and she came towards Thresk and pleaded.

“You will be thoughtful of her, for her?  Oh, if you should play her false—­how I should hate you!” and her eyes flashed fire at him.

“I don’t think that you need fear that.”

But he was too calm for her, too quiet.  She was in the mood to want heroics.  She clamoured for protestations as a drug for her uneasy mind.  And Thresk stood before her without one.  She searched his face with doubtful eyes.  Oh, there seemed to her no tenderness in it.

“She will need—­love,” said Mrs. Repton.  “There—­that’s the word.  Can you give it her?”

“If she comes to me—­yes.  I have wanted her for eight years,” and then suddenly she got, not heroics, but a glimpse of a real passion.  A spasm of pain convulsed his face.  He sat down and beat with his fist upon the table.  “It was horrible to me to ride away from that camp and leave her there—­miles away from any friend.  I would have torn her from him by force if there had been a single hope that way.  But his levies would have barred the road.  No, this was the only chance:  to come away to Bombay, to write to her that the first day, the first night she is able to slip out and travel here she will find me waiting.”

Mrs. Repton was satisfied.  But while he had been speaking a new fear had entered into her.

“There’s something I should have thought of,” she exclaimed.

“Yes?”

“Captain Ballantyne is not generous.  He is just the sort of man not to divorce his wife.”