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India?—what you saw of it? Were you there for long?’

‘Only two years. No, I didn’t care for it at all;—but my India was only an extension of South Kensington, with all the defects of that type of society and none of its virtues. I didn’t like Indian architecture—those nasty teeming temples;—and I didn’t like the Indian landscape, or the climate; it oppressed me.—And all those mysterious dark servants; the impossibility of personal relations with the herds of people who took care of one.—No; I hated it.’ She felt that she chattered a little.

‘Are these your work?’

‘No; they are my husband’s.’

‘I didn’t think them yours somehow.’

It was wonderful indeed to see how much of South Kensington and its standards dear Charlie had put into his water-colours. They were very guileless, very conscientious and disastrously picturesque. It had made him very happy—thank goodness—to paint them and give them to her. Yet glancing at them for a moment she saw, as she had never paused to do before, that the pictures that Hester’s friends painted had indeed performed a useful function. They, like Captain Ingpen, had swept away rubbish.