MR. VINE DECIDED THAT IT MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA for Lilian to give the new arrivals in Kushpur drawing lessons.

“Both Miss Bell and Miss Forbes have expressed an interest in sketching,” he said. “Miss Forbes in particular has admired your paintings on several occasions.”

In fact, Miss Bell had merely commented on her own lack of skill with a pencil without intending that anything might be done about it, while Miss Forbes had wondered aloud in Mr. Vine's company why Mrs. Fraser kept so many paintings stacked about her parlor. Mr. Vine, however, had taken it upon himself to interpret these observations according to his own particular needs and, having generously offered Miss Bell and Miss Forbes as Lilian's pupils, he was now sitting in Lilian's parlor, staring, as though hypnotized, at the painting currently clamped to her easel. The subject was a vinelike plant with large flowers wound tightly around the trunk of a yellowish-colored tree. The bark had squeezed like butter against the ligature of creeper that encircled it, so that the image reminded Mr. Vine most forcefully of one of Mrs. Birchwoode's more opulent necklaces, a choker adorned with crimson silk flowers, which appeared to squeeze the jaundiced neck of its owner in exactly the same fashion.

“Can you not simply cut the flowers and bring them home to paint?” he said. “Then you could send one of the bearers out. You wouldn't have to wander about out there yourself.”

“I like to paint the flora where I find them,” said Lilian. “One needs to see their habitat, their environment, their chosen location. If the subject is growing beside a stream, I also paint the stream. If it grows among rocks, I paint the rocks too. And I always include the surrounding vegetation. What if such plants and flowers should disappear forever? We would have no useful record of them without paintings such as these. Oh no, Mr. Vine, to answer your question simply, I must paint the plant where I find it. I can assure you that sending out a bearer would be a next-to-useless exercise. Surely you can see that?”

Mr. Vine gave a dejected grunt. Even before she had finished he regretted asking the question. The answer (so forcefully expressed, so confidently delivered) revealed to him how far Lilian had strayed into the thicket of independent thinking, a thicket so treacherous that unless he were able to hack through it to save her, she would find herself lost forever. She would become like the wicked witch in a children's fairy tale: ostracized, alone, wretched, and bitter.

His plan was a simple one, and simple plans were often the most effective. He was hoping that Lilian's obligations to Miss Bell and Miss Forbes would do something to keep her indoors (Miss Bell certainly was of too nervous a disposition to countenance wandering about the countryside in search of the perfect subject). In addition, the society of other young ladies might remind Lilian of the pleasures of gossip and fashion (and here the magistrate congratulated himself on realizing that Mrs. Birchwoode, Mrs. Toomey, and Mrs. Ravelston lacked the infectious effervescence of youth in their performance of these feminine offices). Finally, on the grounds that he was anxious to see how the ladies were enjoying their lessons, the magistrate now had an excuse to visit Lilian's bungalow on any morning he chose.

Lilian, however, was irritated to be saddled with the two young women. As she had not told Mr. Vine that she intended to leave in a matter of weeks, however, she could not think of a reason to refuse. Besides, it would provide a distraction, at least. Both Miss Bell and Miss Forbes had yet to lose the modern and optimistic outlook they had brought with them from home, and Lilian did not find their company altogether disagreeable; but they were little more than girls and, egged on by the older memsahibs, were becoming increasingly obsessed with the marriage credentials of every Company man, every officer, every unmarried European of Lilian's acquaintance. They were also lacking in either dedication or proficiency when it came to painting and drawing.

“Is it always so hot in Kushpur?” said Miss Bell peevishly. She fanned her face with her hand. “I got up at five o'clock this morning simply in the hope that I would have at least an hour or two at a temperature that was less than intolerable. Mr. Vine said the thermometer in the kutcherry yesterday stood at eighty-six degrees!”

“It will get much hotter, I can assure you,” said Miss Forbes knowledgeably.

“It's no wonder that the natives are always asleep. They can't have the energy for anything else. Neither do I, but Aunt Ravelston keeps sending me out on rides or to see Fanny Birchwoode for tea. And I am covered in these horrible itchy spots because of the heat.” Miss Bell lowered her voice. “My corset chafes them terribly.” She scratched at a mosquito bite that stood out on her forehead like a caste mark. “We have an infestation of muskrats beneath the house, too. Muskrats! Can you imagine anything more horrible?”

“It's a common occurrence,” said Lilian.

Miss Bell's rosebud mouth became a pout—an expression Lilian imagined would be habitual within a few years spent in a place like Kushpur. “I've never seen a muskrat, but I assume they're quite large. My uncle, Mr. Ravelston, came into my room last night saying he was looking for one of these dreadful creatures that he had reason to suspect had actually entered the house. He said it might even be hiding in my bed, and he lifted the sheet where I lay.”

She looked at Miss Forbes, but the captain's sister was surreptitiously admiring her own reflection in the surface of Lilian's teapot.

“How I wish I could go home,” whispered Miss Bell, suddenly tearful. “Don't you ever wish for such a thing, Mrs. Fraser? Especially now Mr. Fraser has … I mean, surely you can't actually want to remain in Kushpur without him?”

“Mrs. Fraser likes it here,” said Miss Forbes.

“Do you?” Miss Bell looked at Lilian, her blue eyes round with disbelief.

“Yes,” said Lilian.

“But how can you?”

“My recollection of home is of a cruel place. A place of tyranny and sadness, filled with selfish and pitiless men,” said Lilian bitterly. “I might want to leave Kushpur, but I have no wish to leave India and no desire to go back home.” But even as she spoke Lilian knew that this was not true. There was one memory of home that was very different to those dark and pain-filled thoughts, one memory that burned as brightly as a comet in her mind. It was the only joyous memory she had of the place, though it was shadowed by the sadness of love and separation. “I don't miss home at all,” she said. “But I miss my sister terribly. She is dearer to me than any man, any husband could ever be. I would go home only to fetch Alice.”

“Does she write?” said Miss Forbes. “That can offer some comfort, at least.”

“No,” said Lilian. “She is … prevented from doing so. But I write to her. I write a letter to her every day, though I imagine she receives none of them.”

“I have no sisters,” interrupted Miss Bell, as though Lilian had held the floor for quite long enough. “Indeed, no family apart from Mr. and Mrs. Ravelston. Mrs. Ravelston is my mother's second cousin, by marriage. I suppose I have no one to go home to, should I even be able to get there.”

“You need to find a husband,” said Miss Forbes briskly.

“That'd get you away from Uncle Ravelston and his sheet lifting,” said Lilian.

Miss Bell looked confused.

“What about Mr. Vine?” continued Miss Forbes in a businesslike manner. “He's a good catch.”

“Oh.”

“Or Dr. Mossly. Or what about Captain Lewis? He's a handsome enough fellow. My brother speaks very highly of him.”

“I do like a man with a soldierly bearing,” said Miss Bell. “But I understand that Mrs. Birchwoode has set her mind on Captain Lewis for Fanny. As for Dr. Mossly, I think he has eyes for someone else.” She smiled knowingly at Lilian.

Lilian's teacup rattled onto its saucer.

“There is no place more illuminating to get to know a man's character than at the bedside of one's dying husband,” said Miss Bell, her head held high. “And to watch your tender ministrations, Mrs. Fraser, why, any man who witnessed such loving care could only fall in love with you. No, I was thinking more about your friend. About Mr. Hunter.” She blushed as red as a geranium. “He is so very tall and well proportioned, though the older ladies say he is quite a savage at heart. What do you know of him? Is he married? The ladies say he's not, but you never know—”

“He's not married,” said Lilian.

“Perhaps he's looking for a wife,” said Miss Bell. “They say he has been in Kushpur for months now, when he should really have left. I wonder what detains him.”

Miss Forbes stroked her chestnut ringlets. “Well, I must say he was most attentive to me last week. I was walking with my brother and Captain Wheeler when Mr. Hunter came over specifically to speak to me. Of course, he directed most of his remarks to my brother, but there was no mistaking it. He actually took my hand and welcomed me to Kushpur.” She smiled. “A wife is a comfort and a blessing. Mr. Hunter must surely be in need of one.”

“Perhaps he is too wild,” breathed Miss Bell.

“I believe you knew him back home, Mrs. Fraser,” said Miss Forbes.

“He was an acquaintance of my father's.”

“And what have you seen or heard of him that convinces you that he is less than gentlemanly?”

“Oh, this and that.”

“But what?” Miss Bell and Miss Forbes sat on the edge of the settee. Miss Bell's pale face grew paler; Miss Forbes pressed her lips together. Were they on the brink of discovering a scandal? Of carrying back to Mrs. Birchwoode a rumor that she had not already heard?

Lilian watched as curiosity craftiness—even jealousy—chased across their features. The girls' appetites for gossip, encouraged by the other European ladies and sharpened by boredom, smiled hungrily at her from two pairs of eager lips. Lilian tried to remember how she had felt all those months ago when she discovered that Mr. Hunter had left her father's house, when she realized that he had no intention of returning and had gone off plant hunting without even saying good-bye. Rage and humiliation had been her foremost sentiments, though she found that she could muster no such emotions now. She tried to recall the distress and shock of finding that she was carrying Mr. Hunter's child, the horror of Dr. Cattermole's fingers against her skin and the cold jaws of the speculum inside her, the pain and awfulness of those moments when the child had been expelled from her womb. And then the desolation of seeing her dead baby wrapped so tightly in her cotton sheet, her tiny face bruised and contorted. Lilian had schooled herself never to think of these things, so that the memory of the infant seemed clouded and indistinct, as though she were viewing a photograph of her through a watery lens. She felt a sense of detachment from those sad and terrible times, and her misery had long since drained away, leaving only a faint desire for vengeance and something she might perhaps have described as relief.

Lilian lowered her voice as she leaned forward.

“There was a rumor, I really have no idea how true it is, that Mr. Hunter seduced a young lady. That he abandoned her without further thought for her well-being. Of course, this may simply be gossip. You should perhaps not repeat the story to anyone else, not least in case the name of this unfortunate young lady becomes known.”

“Where did you hear this?” whispered Miss Bell. “And when?”

“Just before I was married. In England. It was well known in certain circles at the time.”

“He seduced her?”

“Oh yes. Though I understand that she was not a reluctant participant.”

“And he ran off?”

“He had taken his pleasure. What more did he need from her?”

Miss Bell and Miss Forbes exchanged a glance.

“And where is the lady now? What happened to her?” said Miss Bell.

“Her baby died, and—”

“There was a baby!”

“I believe so.”

“The scoundrel!” breathed Miss Forbes.

“And the lady?” insisted Miss Bell. “What about the lady?”

“Her fate is uncertain.”

“The poor soul. Perhaps she drowned herself.”

“Oh, I doubt it,” said Lilian.