



Produced by Al Haines.





                          *ROSE OF THE WORLD*



                                   BY

                         AGNES & EGERTON CASTLE

                               AUTHORS OF
              "THE SECRET ORCHARD" AND "THE STAR DREAMER"



                    _O Dream of my Life, my Glory,_
                    _O Rose of the World, my Dream_
                             (THE DOMINION OF DREAMS)



                                 LONDON
                 SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE
                                  1905
                        (_All rights reserved_)




                               PRINTED BY
                   WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
                          LONDON AND BECCLES.




                                *BOOK I*



                          *ROSE OF THE WORLD*



                              *CHAPTER I*


It is our fate as a nation, head and heart of a world empire, that much
of our manhood must pursue its career far away from home.  And it is our
strength that these English sons of ours have taught themselves to make
it home wherever they find their work.

The fervid land of India had become home to Raymond Bethune for so many
years that it would have been difficult for him to picture his life
elsewhere. The glamour of the East, of the East that is England's, had
entered into his blood, without, however, altering its cool northern
deliberate course; that it can be thus with our children, therein also
lies the strength of England.

Raymond Bethune, Major of Guides, loved the fierce lads to whom he was
at once father and despot, as perhaps he could have loved no troop of
honest thick-skulled English soldiers.  He was content with the
comradeship of his brother officers, men who thought like himself and
fought like himself; content to spend the best years of existence
hanging between heaven and earth on the arid flanks of a Kashmir
mountain range, in forts the walls of which had been cemented by
centuries of blood; looked forward, without blenching, to the
probability of laying down his life in some obscure frontier skirmish,
unmourned and unnoticed.  His duty sufficed him.  He found happiness in
it that it was his duty.  Such men as he are the very stones of our
Empire's foundation.

                     *      *      *      *      *

Yet though he was thus intimately satisfied with his life and his life's
task, Bethune was conscious of a strange emotion, almost a contraction
of the heart, as he followed the kitmutgar to Lady Gerardine's
drawing-room in the palace of the Lieutenant-Governor, this October day.

The town below hung like a great rose jewel, scintillating, palpitating,
in a heat unusual for the autumn of Northern India.  Out of the glare,
the colour, the movement, the noise; out of the throng of smells--spice,
scent, garlic, the indescribable breath of the East--into the dim cool
room; it was like stepping from India into England!  And by the tug at
his heart-strings he might have analysed (had he been of those that
analyse) that, after all, the old home was nearest and dearest still;
might have realised that his content beneath the scorching suns, amid
the blinding snows of his adopted country, arose after all but of his
deep filial love of, and pride in, the distant English isle.

He put down his bat and looked round: not a hint of tropical colour, not
a touch of exotic fancy, of luxuriant oriental art anywhere; but the
green and white and rosebud of chintz, the spindle-legged elegance of
Chippendale, the soft note of Chelsea china, the cool greys and whites
of Wedgwood.  From the very flower-bowl a fastidious hand had excluded
all but those delicate blossoms our paler sunshine nourishes.  Some such
room, dignified with the consciousness of a rigid selection, reticent to
primness in its simple yet distinguished art, fragrant with the
potpourri of English gardens, fragrant too with memories of generations
of wholesome English gentlefolks, you may meet with any day in some old
manor-house of the shires.  To transport the complete illusion to the
heart of India, Bethune knew well must have cost more labour and money
than if the neighbouring palaces had been ransacked for their treasures.
It was obvious, too, that the fancy here reigning supreme was that of
one who looked upon her