"Well, since you're too busy for even a chat with your old sweetheart this morning, she'll just need to come again another time," said the girl, with a toss of her head, as she crumpled the note in her long brown fingers. "I'll hand your little gift to mother. She'll send you a chit to thank you awfulee for minding on her." Miss Baltus seemed at last disposed to retreat, but a "loose end" was being discovered by Mr. Rayner. Fearing it might develop into a serious tangle, he decided to take his courage in both hands. "Look here, Leila, perhaps you don't know that a Mrs. Rayner now reigns here. I brought a wife from England with me." The announcement was evidently quite unexpected. The girl's amber skin grew a shade darker. Her lustrous eyes flashed fire, and violent emotion seemed to check her utterance for a moment; then she burst forth in fury: "A Mrs. Rayner reigns--and her not me! So this is your little game? Why, it's the same joke they used to make to me when you came sweethearting--'Mrs. Rayner would reign!' You false snake! But I'll be even with you yet or my name's not Leila Baltus! You can go back to your lovelee English bride, but my word, you're not done with her you fooled," she hissed as she made a step forward, holding out her thin fingers as if to return the rupee note, but on second thoughts she crushed it in her palm again. "No, we shan't be ten rupees poorer anyhow because of the woman who has supplanted me! I'll just hand it on to my poor mother to pay for the prawn curries she wasted on an ungrateful toad!" she muttered, turning her back swiftly on the young man and hurrying away. Alfred Rayner stood for a moment watching the slender swaying figure disappearing down the leafy road, then he turned homeward, muttering: "Don't fancy I've scotched her. That horrid vixen will give me trouble yet! What a pity I gave her that money when I can ill spare it with all my heavy expenses. Depend upon it, she'll be upon me for another note before long! I've a good mind to make a clean breast of it to Hester. She's no fool, she'll understand when I give her my side of the story that I'm simply being persecuted and blackmailed by a half-caste liar!" Having decided on this course he walked briskly towards the house, taking the stable-entrance which happened to be nearest the part of the road where he he had been talking with his old acquaintance. CHAPTER VIII.