nto thy firmament!"

To which the waiting multitude thundered a response.

"A sacrifice! A sacrifice! A sacrifice!"

Over and over again went up the cry as men and women and children fell
foaming to the ground, "and conches and kettledrums, tabors and drums,
and cow-horns blared."

Then came a silence, deep, sinister, and foreboding; only for one
second before it was broken by a gasp, the catching of the breath in
ecstasy of thousands of mankind.

And followed screams of pure delight as Leonie flung back her hand, in
which gleamed the diamond hilted dagger, just as a terrific peal of
thunder crashed upon the searing flash of lightning, which flamed from
the dense clouds as they swept over and blotted out the moon.

CHAPTER XL

"Could I come near your beauty with my nails,
I'd set my ten commandments in your face!"--_Shakespeare_.

Leonie was sitting on the edge of her bed waiting for the _gharri_ to
take her to the station; she had lunched and breakfasted in her
bedroom, in fact she had lived there since her interview with the
manager, which had been indescribably unpleasant for him, in that it
had been so distressing to the gentle girl as she had sat and nodded
her head and looked at him out of agonised, forgiving eyes.

The hotel _en masse_, at least the feminine portion of it, had had a
prior interview with the manager which had been _superlatively_
unpleasant for him.

Coerced by a force which was closely allied to the brute; almost
shouted down when he essayed to argue in favour of the hounded girl;
threatened by the immediate transfer of the entire visiting list to the
books of a rival hotel, he had ultimately owned to defeat; and Leonie
sat on the edge of her bed, staring vacantly into the denuded
dressing-room, while the native staff, yea! even unto him who had done
her no service, buzzed round in the vicinity of her door.

Strange things had happened, things undefined, and therefore not
capable of bearing the light of honest dissection or discussion.

What _had_ happened during the night of rioting--so-called--in the
city? What had been the meaning of those white-robed figures which had
fluttered near her door? And oh! why had her faithful ayah been found
on the edge of the river the morning after, stabbed through the heart?

As if anyone in India with any sense at all _would_ make inquiries
about the last event.

All that and a lot more! and quite enough to slam the gates of he