In 1934 Madras, Honorine and Digby escape the heat for a Chaplin matinee, then ride to Marina Beach as war rumors swirl. Honorine mourns losses from the Great War, distrusts new aggressors, and admits she loves Madras but senses independence coming. On the shore, she warns Digby about the constraints facing Anglo-Indian women and urges him to release the pain of his mother’s death; he admits solitude feels safer.

Before Christmas, Honorine fetches Digby for an emergency: Lena Mylin, newly arrived by steamer, is worsening after Claude Arnold labeled her illness “dyspepsia.” Digby’s exam reveals peritonitis from an acutely inflamed, obstructed gallbladder. He recommends urgent operation, which the distraught husband, Franz Mylin, supports.

In theater, Digby finds a distended, gangrenous gallbladder. He evacuates pus, bile, and stones, unroofs the sac adherent to the liver, avoids the hazardous cystic duct, leaves a drain, and controls bleeding. Postoperatively Lena is hypotensive; using his own blood-bank innovation, Digby types her as B and transfuses two units of his universal-donor blood, restoring her perfusion.

Claude reappears only to claim Digby acted imprudently, provoking Franz, who nearly strikes him before Arnold flees. The confrontation cements Arnold’s hostility and highlights Digby’s rising authority born of results rather than rank.

Lena rapidly improves, charms the ward, and is discharged in ten days. Grateful, the Mylins invite Digby to their Western Ghats estate near Cochin, declaring him kin by blood, while the evening on the Coromandel underscores the fragile calm before looming upheavals.