offered to me. I accepted it without hesitation. My only pride
left was the miserable pride of indifference. So long as I
pursued my profession, the place in which I pursued it was a
matter of no importance to my mind.

It was long before we could persuade my mother even to
contemplate the new prospect now set before me. When she did at
length give way, she yielded most unwillingly. I confess I left
her with the tears in my eyes--the first I had shed for many a
long year past.

The history of our expedition is part of the history of British
India. It has no place in this narrative.

Speaking personally, I have to record that I was rendered
incapable of performing my professional duties in less than a
week from the time when the mission reached its destination. We
were encamped outside the city; and an attack was made on us,
under cover of darkness, by the fanatical natives. The attempt
was defeated with little difficulty, and with only a trifling
loss on our side. I was among the wounded, having been struck by
a javelin, or spear, while I was passing from one tent to
another.

Inflicted by a European weapon, my injury would have been of no
serious consequence. But the tip of the Indian spear had been
poisoned. I escaped the mortal danger of lockjaw; but, through
some peculiarity in the action of the poison on my constitution
(which I am quite unable to explain), the wound obstinately
refused to heal.

I was invalided and sent to Calcutta, where the best surgical
help was at my disposal. To all appearance, the wound healed
there--then broke out again. Twice this happened; and the medical
men agreed that the best course to take would be to send me home.
They calculated on the invigorating effect of the sea voyage,
and, failing this, on the salutary influence of my native air. In
the Indian climate I was pronounced incurable.

Two days before the ship sailed a letter from my mother brought
me startling news. My life to come--if I _had_ a life to
come--had been turned into a new channel. Mr. Germaine had died
suddenly, of heart-disease. His will, bearing date at the time
when I left England, bequeathed an income for life to my mother,
and left the bulk of his property to me, on the one condition
that I adopted his name. I accepted the condition, of course, and
became George Germaine.

Three months later, my mother and I were restored to each other.

Except that I still had some trouble with my wound, behold me now
to all appearance one of the most enviable of existing mortals;
promoted to the position of a wealthy gentleman; possessor of a
house in London and of a country-seat in Perthshire; and,
nevertheless, at twenty-three years of age, one of the most
miserable men living!


And Mary?

In the ten years that had now passed over, what had become of
Mary?

You have heard my story. Read the few pages that follow, and you
will hear hers.

CHAPTER VI.

HER STORY.

WHAT I have now to tell you of Mary is derived from information
obtained at a date in my life later by many years than any date
of which I have written yet. Be pleased to remember this.


Dermody, the bailiff, possessed relatives in London, of whom he
occasionally spoke, and relatives in Scotland, whom he never
mentioned. My father had a strong prejudice against the Scotch
nation. Dermody knew his master well enough to be aware that the
prejudice might extend to _him_, if he spoke of his Scotch
kindred. He was a discreet man, and he never mentioned them.

On leaving my father's service, he had made his way, partly by
land and partly by sea, to Glasgow--in which city his friends
resided. With his character and his experience, Dermody was a man
in a
thousand to any master who was lucky enough to discover him. His
friends bestirred themselves. In six weeks' time he was placed in
charge of a gentleman's estate on the eastern coast of Scotland,
and was comfortably established with his mother and his daughter
in a new home.

The insulting language which my father had addressed to him had
sunk deep in Dermody's mind. He wrote privately to his relatives
in London, telling them that he had found a new situation which
suited him, and that he had his reasons for not at present
mentioning his address. In this way he baffled the inquiries
which my mother's lawyers (failing to discover a trace of him in
other directions) addressed to his London friends. Stung by his
old master's reproaches, he sacrificed his daughter and he


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