He kept his wounded heart all to himself for a
while.
Then trouble came to him. All who go to Simla, know the slope from the
Telegraph to the Public Works Office. Hannasyde was loafing up the hill, one
September morning between calling hours, when a 'rickshaw came down in a hurry,
and in the 'rickshaw sat the living, breathing image of the girl who had made
him so happily unhappy.
Hannasyde leaned against the railing and gasped. He wanted to run downhill
after the 'rickshaw, but that was impossible; so he went forward with most of
his blood in his temples. It was impossible, for many reasons, that the woman
in the 'rickshaw could be the girl he had known. She was, he discovered later,
the wife of a man from Dindigul, or Coimbatore, or some out-of-the-way place,
and she had come up to Simla early in the season for the good of her health.
She was going back to Dindigul, or wherever it was, at the end of the season;
and in all likelihood would never return to Simla again, her proper Hill-
station being Ootacamund. That night, Hannasyde, raw and savage from the raking
up of all old feelings, took counsel with himself for one measured hour. What
he decided upon was this; and you must decide for yourself how much genuine
affection for the old love, and how much a very natural inclination to go
abroad and enjoy himself, affected the decision.
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