It was three months after this that the Marquis of Walderhurst followed Emily Fox-Seton out upon the heath, and finding her sitting footsore and depressed in spirit beside the basket of Lady Maria’s fish, asked her to marry him.

When the news reached him, Alec Osborn went and shut himself up in his quarters and blasphemed until his face was purple and big drops of sweat ran down it.  It was black bad luck—­it was black bad luck, and it called for black curses.  What the articles of furniture in the room in the bungalow heard was rather awful, but Captain Osborn did not feel that it did justice to the occasion.

When her husband strode by her to his apartment, Mrs. Osborn did not attempt to follow him.  She had only been married two years, but she knew his face too well; and she also knew too well all the meaning of the fury contained in the words he flung at her as he hurled himself past her.

“Walderhurst is going to be married!” Mrs. Osborn ran into her own room and sat down clutching at her hair as she dropped her face in her little dark hands.  She was an Anglo-Indian girl who had never been home, and had not had much luck in life at any time, and her worst luck had been in being handed over by her people to this particular man, chiefly because he was the next of kin to Lord Walderhurst.  She was a curious, passionate creature, and had been in love with him in her way.  Her family had been poor and barely decently disreputable.  She had lived on the outskirts of things, full of intense girlish vanity and yearnings for social recognition, poorly dressed, passed over and snubbed by people she aspired to know socially, seeing other girls with less beauty and temperament enjoying flirtations with smart young officers, biting her tongue out with envy and bitterness of thwarted spirit.  So when Captain Osborn cast an eye on her and actually began a sentimental episode, her relief and excitement at finding herself counting as other girls did wrought itself up into a passion.  Her people were prompt and sharp enough to manage the rest, and Osborn was married before he knew exactly whither he was tending.  He was not pleased with himself when he wakened to face facts.  He could only console himself for having been cleverly led and driven into doing the thing he did not want to do, by the facts that the girl was interesting and clever and had a good deal of odd un-English beauty.

It was a beauty so un-English that it would perhaps appear to its greatest advantage in the contrasts afforded by life in England.  She was so dark, of heavy hair and drooping-lidded eyes and fine grained skin, and so sinuous of lithe, slim body, that among native beauties she seemed not to be sufficiently separated by marks of race.  She had tumbled up from childhood among native servants, who were almost her sole companions, and who had taught her curious things.  She knew their stories and songs, and believed in more of their occult beliefs than any but herself knew.