There was nobody to blame; only there had happened to Hilary one of those things which strike like a sword through a young and happy heart, taking all the life and youth out of it.
Robert Lyon had, half an hour ago, told her--and she had had to hear it as a piece of simple news, to which she had only to say, "Indeed!"-- that to day and to-morrow were his two last days at Stowbury--almost his last in England.

Within a week he was to sail for India.
There had befallen him what most people would have considered a piece of rare good fortune.

At the London University, a fellow student, whom he had been gratuitously "coaching" in Hindostanee, fell ill, and was "thrown upon his hands." as he briefly defined services which must have been great, since they had resulted in this end.

The young man's father--a Liverpool and Bombay merchant--made him an offer to go out there, to their house, at a rising salary of 300 rupees a month for three years; after the third year to become a junior partner; remaining at Bombay in that capacity for two years more.
This he told to Hilary and Ascott in almost as few words as I have here put it--for brevity seemed a refuge to him.

It was also to one of them.