So much would infallibly have
to be put down for surprise and so much reasonably for displeasure,
without any prejudice to the green hope budding underneath; the key to
Hilda's theory might very well be lost in contingencies. Nevertheless,
Alicia postponed her story from day to day and from hour to hour. If her
ideas about it--she kept them carefully in solution--could have been
precipitated they might have appeared in a formula favourite with her
brother, the Surgeon-Major, who often talked of giving nature a chance.
She told him finally on the morning of his first drive. They went
together and alone, Alicia taking her brother's place in the carriage at
a demand for him from the hospital. It was seven o'clock, and the
morning wind swept soft and warm from over the river. There was a white
light on all the stucco parapets, and their shadows slanted clear and
delicately purple to the west. The dust slept on the broad roads of the
Maidan, only a curling trace lifted itself here and there at the heel of
a cart-bullock, and nothing had risen yet of the lazy tumult of the
streets that knotted themselves in the city. From the river, curving
past the statue of an Indian administrator, came a string of country
people with baskets on their heads.
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