'I think it's a pity your husband keeps a bottle of whisky at the office.
He's apt to take a nip more often than he otherwise would.'
Mr Simpson's voice was hoarse with agitation.
Millicent felt a sudden coldness shiver through her.
She controlled herself, for she knew that she must not frighten the boy if she were to get out of him all there was to tell.
He was unwilling to speak.
She pressed him, wheedling, appealing to his sense of duty, and at last she began to cry.
Then he told her that Harold had been drunk more or less for the last fortnight, the natives were talking about it, and they said that soon he would be as bad as he had been before his marriage.
He had been in the habit of drinking a good deal too much then, but details of that time, notwithstanding all her attempts, Mr Simpson resolutely declined to give her.
'Do you think he's drinking now?' she asked.
'I don't know.'
Millicent felt herself on a sudden hot with shame and anger.
The Fort, as it was called because the rifles and the ammunition were kept there, was also the court-house.
It stood opposite the Resident's bungalow in a garden of its own.
The sun was just about to set and she did not need a hat.
She got up and walked across.
She found Harold sitting in the office behind the large hall in which he administered justice.
There was a bottle of whisky in front of him.
He was smoking cigarettes and talking to three or four Malays who stood in front of him listening with obsequious and at the same time scornful smiles.
His face was red.
The natives vanished.
'I came to see what you were doing,' she said.
He rose, for he always treated her with elaborate politeness, and lurched.
Feeling himself unsteady he assumed an elaborate stateliness of demeanour.
'Take a seat, my dear, take a seat.
I was detained by press of work.'
She looked at him with angry eyes.
'You're drunk,' she said.
He stared at her, his eyes bulging a little, and a haughty look gradually traversed his large and fleshy face.
'I haven't the remotest idea what you mean,' he said.
She had been ready with a flow of wrathful expostulation, but suddenly she burst into tears.
She sank into a chair and hid her face.
Harold looked at her for an instant, then the tears began to trickle down his own cheeks; he came towards her with outstretched arms and fell heavily on his knees.
Sobbing, he clasped her to him.
'Forgive me, forgive me,' he said.
'I promise you it shall not happen again.
It was that damned malaria.'
'It's so humiliating,' she moaned.
He wept like a child.
There was something very touching in the self-abasement of that big dignified man.
Presently Millicent looked up.
His eyes, appealing and contrite, sought hers.
'Will you give me your word of honour that you'll never touch liquor again?'
'Yes, yes.
I hate it.'
It was then she told him that she was with child.
He was overjoyed.
'That is the one thing I wanted.
That'll keep me straight.'
They went back to the bungalow.