"Well, they are the curse of the country, and if it is in my power to abate that curse, and release a few hundred slaves, I shall not have lived in vain." "Brian, you ought to have been a barrister; I can see and hear you haranguing a jury." "Thank you, I'm perfectly satisfied with my present profession, hunting down and securing criminals for barristers to denounce and juries to condemn." There was a long silence; Mrs. Lepell put a few stitches in her work, and Salwey made some notes in a little book. "District Superintendent Salwey," she began suddenly, "of what are you thinking?" "Aunt Liz, this question of yours has become a confirmed habit, as regular as 'how do you do?' Since you particularly wish to know--I am thinking of the new Miss Chandos and her turquoise necklet; why is she kept so strictly in the background?" "Perhaps her mother imagines that she would extinguish Dominga--and Dominga is her idol, her brazen image." "Possibly, and the other is a true lady, unaffected, refined, and altogether a most attractive and interesting personality." "But nothing to _you_, Brian. You must not fall in love with her; think of Mrs. Lopez as you see her, basking in the sun, a shapeless old woman, a mass of superstition and ignorance; think of Verona's grandmother, and then think of your own. You know the beautiful picture in the Roxley library--I believe if you were to marry a Eurasian girl, she would come down out of her frame!" CHAPTER XXIV "Girls, I have ordered the wagonette for this afternoon," announced Mrs. Chandos, "so we will all go to the club. Verona, you have been here two months, and never once been in to the station. Just fancy!" Verona's attempted apologies and excuses were imperiously silenced. In a quarter of an hour she found herself driving from the door, in company with her mother, Dominga, Pussy and Blanche, who had been spending the morning with her relations. "Oh, Verona, how I wish you knew some of the officers' wives," bewailed her mother; "it would be such a help to your poor sisters. You see, although we are such a good family at home, and go back for hundreds of years, yet we are looked down on in Rajahpore as just factory nobodies. Your father will never leave a card on the mess, no, not even when his old friends were here, though I went down on my knees and asked him to do it. Yes, I did! No one calls on us except one or two young men who are no good. No?" "But don't you go to numbers of entertainments and tennis parties?" enquired the newcomer.