“Yes,” she said.  “Stella has lived in India for the best part of eight years.  She came out with some friends in the winter, made Captain Ballantyne’s acquaintance and married him almost at once—­in January, I think it was.  Of course I only know from what I’ve been told.  I was a schoolgirl in England at the time.”

“Of course,” Thresk agreed.  He was conscious of a sharp little stab of resentment.  So very quickly Stella had forgotten that morning on the Downs!  It must have been in the autumn of that same year that she had gone out to India, and by February she was married.  The resentment was quite unjustified, as no one knew better than himself.  But he was a man; and men cannot easily endure so swift an obliteration of their images from the thoughts and the hearts of the ladies who have admitted that they loved them.  None the less he pressed for details.  Who was Ballantyne?  What was his position?  After all he was obviously not the millionaire to whom in a more generous moment he had given Stella.  He caught himself on a descent to the meanness of rejoicing upon that.  Meanwhile Mrs. Carruthers rippled on.

“Captain Ballantyne?  Oh, he’s a most remarkable man!  Older than Stella, certainly, but a man of great knowledge and insight.  People think most highly of him.  Languages come as easily to him as crochet-work to a woman.”

This paragon had been Resident in the Principality of Bakuta to the north of Bombay when Stella had first arrived.  But he had been moved now to Chitipur in Rajputana.  It was supposed that he was writing in his leisure moments a work which would be the very last word upon the native Principalities of Central India.  Oh, Stella was to be congratulated!  And Mrs. Carruthers, in her fine mansion on Malabar Hill, breathed a sigh of envy at the position of the wife of a high official of the British Raj.

Thresk looked over again to the portrait on the piano.

“I am very glad,” he said cordially as once more he rose.

“But you shall sit next to Mrs. Repton to-night,” said Mrs. Carruthers.  “And she will tell you more.”

“Thank you,” answered Thresk.  “I only wished to know that things are going well with Mrs. Ballantyne—­that was all.”

CHAPTER IV

JANE REPTON

Mrs. Carruthers kept her promise.  She went in herself with Henry Thresk, as she had always meant to do, but she placed Mrs. Repton upon his left just round the bend of the table.  Thresk stole a glance at her now and then as he listened to the rippling laughter of his hostess during the first courses.  She was a tall woman and rather stout, with a pleasant face and a direct gaze.  Thresk gave her the age of thirty-five and put her down as a cheery soul.  Whether she was more he had to wait to learn with what patience he could.  He was free to turn to her at last and he began without any preliminaries.