Noreen and wanted to see and upbraid him for his
deceit and treachery to their agreement. There had been a furious quarrel
when the two accomplices met. The Rajah taunted the other with his lack of
success with Noreen and the failure of his plan to persuade her to marry
him. Chunerbutty retorted that he had not been allowed sufficient time to
win the favour of an English girl, who, unlike Indian maidens, was free to
choose her own husband. And he threatened to inform the Government if any
further attempt against her were made without his knowledge and approval.
But the quarrel did not last long. Each scoundrel needed the help of the
other. Still, Chunerbutty judged it safer to remove himself from the
Rajah's house and find a lodging elsewhere, lest any deplorable accident
might occur to him under his patron's roof.

After the engineer's departure Noreen seldom saw the Rajah, and then only
at official entertainments, to which his position gained him invitations.
He spoke to her once or twice at these receptions, but as a rule she
contrived to elude him.

So far she had got on very well with Mrs. Smith. Their wills had never
clashed, for the girl unselfishly gave in to her friend whenever the latter
demanded it, which was often enough. Ida's ways were certainly not
Noreen's, and the latter sometimes felt tempted to disapprove of her
excessive familiarity with Captain Bain and one or two others. But the next
moment she took herself severely to task for being censorious of the elder
woman, who must surely know better how to behave towards men than a young
unmarried girl who had been buried so long in the jungle. And Ida did not
guess why sometimes her repentant little friend's caresses were so fervent
and her desire to please her so manifest, and ascribed it all to her own
sweetness of nature.

The coming of the Rains did not check the gaiety of the dwellers on the
mountain-tops, though torrential downpours had to be faced on black nights
in shrouded rickshas and dripping _dandies_, though incessant lightning lit
up the road to the club or theatre, and the thunder made it difficult to
hear the music of the band in the ballroom. Noreen missed nothing of the
revels. But in all the whirl of gaiety and pleasure in which her days were
passed her thoughts turned more and more to the great forest lying
thousands of feet below her, and the man who passed his lonely days
therein.

Little news of him came to her. He never wrote,