



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.

                    