office. Then he turned and bent gravely to Lindsay. "Shall we go now?"
he whispered, and the two made their way to the door, leaving a silence
behind them which Lindsay imagined, on the part of Ensign Sand at least,
to be somewhat resentful. As they passed out, a voice recovered itself
and cried, "Hallelujah!" It was Laura's. And all the way to the
club--Arnold was dining with him there--Lindsay listened to his friend's
analysis of religious appeal to the emotions, but chiefly heard that
clear music above a sordid din, "Hallelujah!" "Hallelujah!"




CHAPTER IV.


When Alicia Livingstone, almost believing she liked it, drove to Number
Three, Lal Behari's Lane and left cards upon Miss Hilda Howe, she was
only partially rewarded. Through the plaster gate-posts, badly in want
of repair and bearing, sunk in one of them, a marble slab announcing
"Residence with Board," she perceived the squalid attempt the place made
at respectability, the servants in dirty livery salaaming curiously, the
over-fed squirrel in a cage in the door, the pair of damaged wicker
chairs in the porch suggesting the easiest intercourse after dinner, the
general discoloration. She observed with irritation that it was a
down-at-heels shrine for such a divinity, in spite of its six dusty
crotons in crumbling plaster urns, but the irritation was rather at her
own repulsion to the place than at any inconsistency it presented. What
she demanded and expected of herself was that Number Three, Lal Behari's
Lane should be pleasing, interesting, acceptable on its merits as a
cheap Calcutta boarding-house. She found herself so unable to perceive