At that moment, a slight unmistakable figure stepped from the shadow of the verandah down the shallow steps flanked with pots of begonia; moving with the effortless grace that Roy’s heart knew too well.  Dress and sari were carnation pink.  Her golden shoes glittered at every step:  and she pensively twirled a square Japanese parasol—­almond blossoms and butterflies scattered abroad on silk of the frailest blue.

“Is their instinct for that sort of thing unconscious, I wonder?” murmured Thea.  “You shall have half an hour with her, to pick up threads.  Help me if you can, Roy.  But—­be discreet!”

Roy scarcely heard her.  He had gone suddenly very still—­his gaze riveted on Aruna.  The Indian dress, the carriage of her veiled head, the leisured grace, so sharply smote him that tears pricked his eyelids; and, for one intoxicating moment he was wafted, in spirit, across the chasm of the War to that dear dream-world of youth, when all distances were blue and all the near prospect bright with the dew of the morning.  Only under a mask-like stillness could he hide that startling uprush of emotion; and had Broome been watching him, he would have seen the subtle film of the East steal over his face.

Thea saw only his sudden abstraction and the whitened knuckles of his left hand.  She also realised, with a faint prick of anxiety, that he had simply not heard her remark.  Was it possible—­could Roy be at the back of Aruna’s waverings?  Would his coming mean fresh complications?  Too distracting to be responsible for anything of that kind....

Without a word, he had risen—­and went quickly forward to meet her.  Thea saw how, on his approach, all her studied composure fell away; and both, when they joined her, looked so happy, yet so plainly discomposed, that Thea felt ridiculously at a loss for just the right word with which to effect a casual retreat.  Responsibility for Sir Lakshman’s grand-daughter was no light matter:  at least she had done well in warning Roy.  These emerging Indian girls...!

It was a positive relief to see the prosaic figure of Floss Eden, in brief tennis skirts and shady hat, hurrying across the lawn, with her boyish stride; racquet swinging, her round face flushed with exercise.

“I say, Aunt Thea—­you’re wanted jut put,"[6] she announced briskly.  “Verney’s in one of his moods—­and Mr Neill will soon be in one of his tempers, if he isn’t forcibly removed.  Instead of helping with the balls, he’s been parading up and down the verandah; two tin pails, tied on to him with string, clattering behind—­making a beast of a row.  Shouting wasn’t any earthly.  So I rushed in and grabbed him.  ‘Verney—­drop it!  What are you doing?’ I said sternly; and he looked up at me like a sainted cherub.  ‘Flop, don’t hinder me.  I’m walkin’ froo the valley of the shadow, an’ goodness an’ mercy are following me all the days of my life.’  That’s the fruits of teaching the Bible to innocents!”