Publisher's Synopsis
The early dawn had given place to the golden sunlight of the Indian morning, but there was still ample shade within certain nooks in the compound of a pleasant-looking two-storied house in one of the leafy roads of Madras. Under an old banyan tree, with its tent-like stems turned downwards and its dense canopy of green overhead, stood a dainty breakfast table. Early tea was over. One bamboo chair had already been vacated by its occupant; in the other, sat a young English lady. Only two months previously Hester Rayner had left home a bride. "She is happy, I think," was always the remark, accompanied by a sigh, made by her anxious mother, as she passed the closely written pages of the latest letter across the rectory breakfast table to her husband.
