“Bromide,” he snarled, “bromide!  Now, Lady Hetth, listen to me.  There is something more than nerves and a highly strung temperament in this.  Next week I want Nannie, not you, to bring the child here on a visit.  I know India and her religions as far as any Englishman dare say he knows anything about that unfathomable country—­yes!  Mam! religions—­Hinduism—­Brahminism—­Buddhism—­why, I’ve passed the best part of my life trying to unravel certain physical and psychical threads knotted up in India; but the years are slipping by, and time is getting shorter and shorter, and but a tithe done out of all there is to do; but thanks be, my boy has inherited my love for this work, and will carry on here when I have crossed the threshold and found the solutions to my problems on the other side.  Though I’m sure I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” he finished brusquely, “we will return to India.”

“Yes!  India is very, very interesting!” piped Lady Hetth, rising and standing on one foot so as to rest the other suffering from an oversmall shoe.

“Very, very interesting!” she continued unctuously and with the enthusiasm she reserved as a rule for the S.P.C.K.I, which letters stand for an attempt to graft a new creed on to the tree of religion in India which was bearing fruit at a period when we were hobnobbing in caves, with a boulder or good stout club as reasons for existence.

“I’ll write and tell you when to send the child and her nurse, and between us we’ll manage to keep her amused.  And in the meantime stop all lessons and let her do exactly as she likes, and feed her up, Mam, feed her up, her bones are simply coming through her skin.”

Again he laughed a great rumbling laugh, as lifting the child from the ground he felt the little hands in his mane of white hair.

“You’re nice,” she decided, “vewy nice.”

“Like to come and stay with me?”

“Oh, yes! if you won’t—­won’t make me——!”

She stopped short.

“Well! what—­won’t make you what?”

“Nothing—­Auntie pulled my dwess!”

The door closed softly.

CHAPTER IV

  “The kindest man,
  The best conditioned and unwearied spirit
  In doing courtesies.”—­Shakespeare.

They met on the threshold.

Swinging back the door to let Leonie and her aunt out, Ellen, the middle-aged maid, almost an heirloom in the family of Cuxson, bristling in starched cap and apron, let in the erstwhile plague of her life, but now as ever the light of her eyes, Jonathan Cuxson, Junior.

He took Lady Hetth’s hand in a mighty and painful grip when after a moment’s hesitation she introduced herself.