n she could travel with him
as far as Jalpaiguri explained it.

Chunerbutty, deputed by the Rajah to act as host to his European guests,
met Daleham's party when they arrived at the gates of Lalpuri and
conducted them to the Palace. They passed through the teeming city with
its thronged bazaar, its narrow, winding streets hemmed in by the
overhanging houses with their painted walls and closely-latticed windows
through which thousands of female eyes peered inquisitively at the white
women, the brightly dressed crowds flattening themselves against the
walls to get out of the way of the two cavalry soldiers of the Rajah's
Bodyguard who galloped recklessly ahead of the car. Soon they reached
the _Nila Mahal_, or Blue Palace, as His Highness's residence was
called, with its iron-studded gates, carved doors, and countless wooden
balconies. A swarm of retainers in magnificent, if soiled, gold-laced
liveries filled the courtyards, and bare-footed sepoys in red coats,
generally burst at the seams and lacking buttons, and old shakoes with
white cotton flaps hanging down behind, guarded the entrance.

A wing of the Palace had been cleared out and hastily furnished in an
attempt to suit European tastes. The guests were accommodated in rooms
floored with marble, generally badly stained or broken. Two large chambers
tiled and wainscoted with wonderfully carved blackwood panels were
apportioned as dining-hall and sitting-room for the English visitors. All
the windows of the wing, many of them closely screened, looked on an inner
courtyard which was bounded on two sides by other buildings of the Palace.
The fourth side was divided off from another courtyard by a high blank wall
pierced by a large gateway, the leaves of the gate hanging broken and
useless from the posts.

Ida and Noreen were given rooms beside each other and were amused at the
heterogeneous collection of odd pieces of furniture in them. The old
four-posted beds with funereal canopies and moth-eaten curtains had
probably been brought from England a hundred years before. In small
chambers off their rooms, with marble walls and floors, and windows
filled with thin slabs of alabaster carved in the most exquisite tracery
as delicate as lace, galvanised iron tubs to be used as baths looked
sadly out of place.

When they had freshened themselves up after their long motor drive they
went down to the dining-hall, where lunch was to be served. And when she
entered the room th