CHAPTER XXVIII

“Is she not pure gold, my mistress?”

JIM looked at his uncle and said nothing. The two men were smoking on the piazza. It was late evening, the day before Major Huntly was to sail for England. He had just mentioned Gladys’ engagement, and found that his nephew knew nothing about it. Jim grew rather white, and the two puffed steadily at their pipes again.

“She ought to have told you,” said his uncle at last. “Does it make a lot of difference?”

“Yes,” said Jim laconically.

“I don’t want to bother you, old fellow, but I think I ought to know did she give you any reason to think——” Jim shook his head.

“No—I was simply—a fool,” he said shortly; and then he added with a rather bitter smile “she wasn’t.”

“But now, you know,” said his uncle, “you’ll shake it off, I hope; there’s as good fish in the sea, you know, as ever came out of it.”

“And they can stay there,” said Jim.

“But you don’t mean you still care for her?”

“Yes, sir, I always shall—whatever she does!”

The night was radiant. Full in the starlit sky the moon poured forth a clear stream of light, bringing out the colors of the world thinly, not as the sun does, but with a strange, mystic richness all her own. The two men had not poetic temperaments. Nights and moons and stars were much alike to them, and they were not thinking just then so much of each other’s sorrows, chiefly of their own. Yet there was a very warm feeling of sympathy between them, and they sat for some time longer smoking in silent fellowship. At last Jim rose to his feet.

“I shall be on duty to-morrow, sir,” he said, “so I’m afraid I shan’t see you again. You’ll drop me a line when you’ve reached home, and tell me how you find the little chap?”

“Yes, Jim. I say, old fellow, I wish Mary was here to-night, she’d know what to say to you. I’m afraid I shall only make a mull of it—you’ve faced your guns pluckily about Gladys—don’t take it too hard; and if I could do any good at seeing your colonel about getting you some shooting leave——”

“Thank you, sir,” Jim interrupted; “it’s awfully good of you. I think perhaps there’s an opening for me to go to the front again, a fellow of ‘ours’ is taken with enteric out there. I’ll get along all right—and you know what I feel about aunt Mary. She was too good a woman to make me lose my faith in them, and it wasn’t Gladys’ fault, sir—it was all mine. You won’t blame her, will you?”

“Oh, I won’t blame her,” said his uncle shortly—“good-bye.”

“Good-bye, sir,” and Jim, sternly setting his shoulders with all an Englishman’s passionate determination to suppress his emotion, passed out into the night.

It was the same beautiful world when earlier in the evening he had enjoyed a talk with his lady-love, and had said that he thought the world was really “an awfully jolly place.”

He would believe no wrong of her now—it is love’s creed for the young—only the world was a beastly hole—that was all; and it was hard lines on a chap to have to come into it whether he would or no. His grief rushed him into metaphysics, an unknown quality to Jim, and he felt more himself again when he had applied for leave—and got it—to be sent to one of the most unhealthy parts of India where there was a little row on.