an anna, very satisfied with himself and his good intentions, was
dropping all his English correspondents one by one, and beginning
more and more to look upon this land as his home. Some men fall
this way; and they are of no use afterwards. The climate where he
was stationed was good, and it really did not seem to him that
there was anything to go Home for.

He did what many planters have done before him--that is to say, he
made up his mind to marry a Hill girl and settle down. He was
seven and twenty then, with a long life before him, but no spirit
to go through with it. So he married Dunmaya by the forms of the
English Church, and some fellow-planters said he was a fool, and
some said he was a wise man. Dunmaya was a thoroughly honest girl,
and, in spite of her reverence for an Englishman, had a reasonable
estimate of her husband's weaknesses. She managed him tenderly,
and became, in less than a year, a very passable imitation of an
English lady in dress and carriage. [It is curious to think that a
Hill man, after a lifetime's education, is a Hill man still; but a
Hill woman can in six months master most of the ways of her English
sisters. There was a coolie woman once. But that is another
story.] Dunmaya dressed by preference in black and yellow, and
looked well.

Meantime the letter lay in Agnes's desk, and now and again she
would think of poor resolute hard-working Phil among the cobras and
tigers of Darjiling, toiling in the vain hope that she might come
back to him. Her husband was worth ten Phils, except that he had
rheumatism of the heart. Three years after he was married--and
after he had tried Nice and Algeria for his complaint--he went to
Bombay, where he died, and set Agnes free. Being a devout woman,