“I shall be disturbing your people at their luncheon,” he said.

“I don’t want you to go in to them,” said the girl.  “I will say goodbye to them for you.”

Thresk followed her up the garden-path, wondering what it was that she had still to say to him.  She led him into a small room at the back of the house, looking out upon the lawn.  Then she stood in front of him.

“Will you kiss me once, please,” she said simply, and she stood with her arms hanging at her side, whilst he kissed her on the lips.

“Thank you,” she said.  “Now will you go?”

He left her standing in the little room and led the horses back to the inn.  That afternoon he took the train to London.

CHAPTER III

IN BOMBAY

It was not until a day late in January eight years afterwards that Thresk saw the face of Stella Derrick again; and then it was only in a portrait.  He came upon it too in a most unlikely place.  About five o’clock upon that afternoon he drove out of the town of Bombay up to one of the great houses on Malabar Hill and asked for Mrs. Carruthers.  He was shown into a drawing-room which looked over Back Bay to the great buildings of the city, and in a moment Mrs. Carruthers came to him with her hands outstretched.

“So you’ve won.  My husband telephoned to me.  We do thank you!  Victory means so much to us.”

The Carruthers were a young couple who, the moment after they had inherited the larger share in the great firm of Templeton & Carruthers, Bombay merchants, had found themselves involved in a partnership suit due to one or two careless phrases in a solicitor’s letter.  The case had been the great case of the year in Bombay.  The issue had been doubtful, the stake enormous and Thresk, who three years before had taken silk, had been fetched by young Carruthers from England to fight it.

“Yes, we’ve won,” he said.  “Judgment was given in our favor this afternoon.”

“You are dining with us to-night, aren’t you.”

“Thank you, yes,” said Thresk.  “At half-past eight.”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Carruthers gave him some tea and chattered pleasantly while he drank it.  She was fair-haired and pretty, a lady of enthusiasms and uplifted hands, quite without observation or knowledge, yet with power to astonish.  For every now and then some little shrewd wise saying would gleam out of the placid flow of her trivialities and make whoever heard it wonder for a moment whether it was her own or whether she had heard it from another.  But it was her own.  For she gave no special importance to it as she would have done had it been a remark she had thought worth remembering.  She just uttered it and slipped on, noticing no difference in value between what she now said and what she had said a second ago.  To her the whole world was a marvel and all things in it equally amazing.  Besides she had no memory.