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Updated: May 21, 2025
She had wished to return, but her hostess, her fiancé, and her brother were all united in the resolve to keep her where she was. So insistent were they that they prevailed at length. It had been a particularly bad season at Ghantala, and sickness was rife there. Baring even went so far as positively to forbid her to return till this should have abated.
It stood in a neglected compound that had once been a paradise, when a certain young officer belonging to the regiment of Sikhs then stationed in Ghantala had taken it and made of it a dainty home for his English bride. Those were the days before the flood, and no one had lived there since.
Latimer, was very kind to her from the outset, and she enjoyed all the Ghantala gaieties under her protection and patronage. Not till Mrs. Latimer was taken ill and had to leave hurriedly for the Hills did it dawn upon Hope, after nearly eight happy months, that her position was one of considerable isolation, and that this might, under certain circumstances, become a matter for regret.
Yet she felt as if there was something solemn in his action; almost as if thereby he registered a vow. Notwithstanding her determination to return to Ghantala after the breaking of the monsoon. Hope stayed on at the Hill Station with Mrs. Latimer till the rains were nearly over.
For it was well away from the cantonments, nearer than any other European dwelling to the native village, and undeniably in the hottest corner of all the Ghantala Valley. Perhaps its general air of desolation had also influenced the minds of possible tenants, for Ghantala was a cheerful station, and its inhabitants preferred cheerful dwelling-places.
She was nearly at the end of her strength. Hyde did not offer to touch her. He only smiled a little at the rising panic in her white face. "Do you know what I am going to do now?" he said. "I am going to mess it's a guest night and they will drink my health as the winner of the Ghantala Cup. And then I shall propose someone else's health. Can you guess whose?"
Her twin-brother, Ronald Carteret, was the youngest subaltern in his battalion, and for his sake, she had persuaded the Magician that the Ghantala Valley was an ideal spot to live in. The Magician was their uncle and sole relative, an old man, wizened and dried up like a monkey, to whom India was a land of perpetual delight and novelty of which he could never tire.
Behind his utmost tenderness she felt his mastery. And so she yielded, and remained at the Hill Station till Mrs. Latimer herself returned to Ghantala in October. She and Ronnie had not been together for nearly six weeks, and the separation seemed to her like as many months. He was at the station to meet them, and the moment she saw him she was conscious of a shock.
He was a civil servant, an engineer, and he had been in Ghantala longer than any one else of the European population. Very reluctantly she gave the order to admit him, hoping that Ronnie would soon return and take him off her hands. For Ronnie professed to like the man. He greeted her with a cool self-assurance that admitted not the smallest doubt of his welcome.
Fact is, I'm very much in Hyde's power for the time being. But, as I say, it will be all right before long. I've promised to ride his Waler for the Ghantala Valley Cup next month. It's a pretty safe thing, and if I pull it off, as I intend to do, everything will be cleared, and I shall be out of his hands. It's a sort of debt of honour, you see.
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