“Of course, it may never be necessary for you to—­to avoid telling Mr. Hartley,” broke in Mrs. Wilder quickly.  Heath was getting on her nerves, and she rose to her feet.  “I cannot thank you sufficiently, and I fear that I have upset you, made you feel my own cares too profoundly,”—­her voice grew almost tender.  “I have never known such ready sympathy, but you feel too intensely, Mr. Heath.  You make my little trouble your own, and you have made me very grateful.  Are you in any trouble yourself?”

Heath stopped for a moment, an outline against the light of the window.  She thought he was going to speak, and she waited with an odd feeling of excitement to hear what was coming, when he suddenly retired back into his usual manner.

A light was travelling up the staircase, casting great shadows before it, and when the boy came to the door of the Padre Sahib’s room, he saw his master saying good-bye to a tall, dark lady who smiled at him and gave him her hand.

“Good night, Mr. Heath, I hardly know how to thank you sufficiently.”

She hurried down the staircase, and as she walked out, she met Atkins coming in on his bicycle.  He jumped off as he saw her, and spoke in surprise.

“I have just been calling on the Padre,” replied Mrs. Wilder pleasantly, as he commented with ever-ready tactlessness upon her presence in the Compound.  “One of my servants is ill; a member of his community.  By the way, do you think that Mr. Heath is quite well himself?”

“Indeed I do not think so.  He overworks.  I have a great admiration for Heath.”

“He must be rather depressing in the rains,” she said, with a careless laugh.  “He positively gave me the shivers.  I can hardly envy you boxed up there with him.  I believe he sees ghosts, and I think they must be horrid ghosts or he couldn’t look as he does.”

Her car was waiting down the road, and Atkins walked beside her and saw her get in.  Mrs. Wilder was very charming to him; she leaned out and smiled at him again.

“Do take care of the Padre,” she called as she drove off.

“There goes a sensible, good-looking woman,” thought Atkins, and he thought highly of Mrs. Wilder for her visit to Heath.  He said so to the Rector of St. Jude’s as they dined together, remarking on the fact that very few women bothered about sick servants, and he was surprised at the cold lack of enthusiasm with which Heath accepted his remark.

“That was what she said?”

“Yes, and I call it unusual in a country where servants are treated like machines.  I’ve never known Mrs. Wilder very well, but she is an interesting woman; don’t you think so, Heath?”

“I don’t know,” said Heath absently.  “I never form definite opinions about people on a slight knowledge of them.”

Atkins felt snubbed, but he only laughed good-naturedly, and Heath relapsed into silence.

Mrs. Wilder was dining out that night, and she looked so superbly handsome and so defiantly well that everyone remarked upon her; and even Draycott Wilder, who might have been supposed to be used to her beauty and her wit, watched her with his slow, following look.  Hartley was not at the dinner-party, but afterwards echoes of its success reached him, and a description of Mrs. Wilder herself that thrilled his romantic sense as he listened.