s one in a dream, and while she listened the tears
gathered in her eyes. How was it she had been so slow to understand?
Would she ever make it up to him? She wondered how long he meant to
keep her in suspense. It was not like him to linger thus if he had
indeed received her message. She hoped he would come soon. The waiting
was hard to bear.

She called to mind once more the last words he had spoken to her.
He had said that he would not swoop a second time, but she could
not imagine him doing anything else. He would be sudden, he would be
disconcerting, he would be overwhelming. He would come on winged feet
in answer to her call, but he would give her no quarter. He would
neither ask nor demand. He would simply take.

She caught her breath and hastened to divert her thought,
realising that she was on the verge of the old torturing process of
self-intimidation which had so often before unnerved her.

The throng about her had lessened considerably. Glancing downwards,
she discerned at the foot of the steps the old beggar who so
persistently haunted the Residency gates, incurring thereby Lady
Bassett's alarmed displeasure. He was crouching well to one side in
the familiar attitude of supplication. There were dozens like him in
Ghawalkhand, but she knew him by the peculiar, gibbering movement of
the wiry beard that protruded from his chuddah. He was repulsive, but
in a fashion fascinating. He made her think of a wizened old monkey
who had wandered from his kind.

She had come to regard him almost in the light of a protege, and,
remembering suddenly that he had besought an alms of her in vain some
hours before, she turned impulsively to a man she knew who had just
come up.

"Colonel Cathcart, will you lend me a rupee?"

He dived in his pocket and brought out a handful of money. She found
the coin she wanted, thanked him with a smile, and began to descend
the steps.

The old native was not looking at her. Something else seemed to have
caught his attention. For the moment he had ceased to cringe and
implore.

She heard Sir Reginald's voice above her. He was standing in talk with
the Rajah while he waited for his wife.

And then--she was half-way down the steps when it happened--a sudden
loud cry rang fiercely up to her, arresting her where she stood--a
man's voice inarticulate at first, bursting from mere sound into
furious headlong denunciation.

"You infernal hound!" it cried. "You damned assassin!"

At the s