Star of India

								

simply a lie!"
For a space there was a shocked silence. Augusta, the carving knife
poised in her hand, looked at her mother; Ellen stared at her plate and
extracted her salts-bottle with stealth from her pocket; Stella found
her own gaze drawn helplessly to the expressionless old countenance at
the end of the table, and, despite her new-born courage, she quailed.
"My dear," said grandmamma smoothly, "you had better go and lie down.
The weather has upset you. I think you require a powder."
Stella burst into something between laughter and tears; she made a
childish dash for the door and ran noisily up the stairs.
The meal in the dining-room continued as though nothing had happened.
It was not a Carrington custom to discuss unpleasant occurrences at
meals, or, indeed, at any other time, if such discussions could possibly
be avoided; the Carrington elders possessed a fine faculty for ignoring
difficult subjects. It was a gift that had carried them apparently
unscathed through various trials. When it became imperative to speak of
anything painful it was done as briefly and reservedly as possible. It
was not until well on in the afternoon, when Mrs. Carrington had
awakened from her nap in the drawing-room, that Stella's outrageous
behaviour was mentioned.
The drawing-room at The Chestnuts was a long narrow room with three
French windows opening on a little paved terrace. Formerly the house had
been a farm dwelling, the last remnant of a property acquired a century
ago by a Carrington ancestor with a fortune made in the East and
dissipated in the West. The Court, where the Verralls now reigned, had
once belonged to this magnificent Carrington, and the ladies of The
Chestnuts never forgot the fact. They regarded the Verralls as
interlopers, though by now the Verralls had been lords of the manor for
several generations.
But though The Court and all its acres were lost to the Carringtons,
they had clung as a family to Chestnut Farm, adding to it from time to
time as fluctuating fortunes permitted. It was a haven for Carrington
widows, unmarried daughters, retired old-soldier Carringtons; a
jumping-off place for sons as they started in life, a holiday home for
successions of young Carringtons while their parents were abroad; and
there was still the family vault in the parish church where they could
be buried if India spared them to die in England. Stella's grandfather,
whom she could not remember, lay there with others of his name, and it
had never entered grandmamma's mind to live or die anywhere but at The
Chestnuts.
But to return to the drawing-room--a room that breathed of a people long
connected with the East--here were sandal-wood boxes, caskets composed
of porcupine quills, coloured clay models of Indian servants, brasses
and embroideries. The warmth of the afternoon drew forth faint aromas
still stored in these relics, mementoes of travel and service and
adventure, the perfume that still hung in the folds of the handsome