"Do, pray, imagine Mrs. Chandos in England!" exclaimed Mrs. Lepell. "How I should like to see her mixing in county society--mincing about on her tip-toes, and conversing in high Chi-Chi, wouldn't you, Brian?" turning towards her nephew, who sat with his cigar out, his hands clasped behind his head and his eyes fixed on the distance. As he made no reply, his aunt continued: "My dear, you are in a brown study!" "If you mean that I am thinking of Mrs. Chandos--I am _not_." "Then a penny for your thoughts!" "I was thinking of that girl," he said, rising and stretching himself, "an heiress in the beginning, a penniless Eurasian now. What will her end be?" "Ask me that question in a year's time, and now, Brian, it is twelve o'clock, your bark is on the tide, if you don't go soon, your bearer will be paddling up here to know what has become of you?" CHAPTER XVIII Verona was now painfully conscious that she could no longer harbour illusions, and had begun to realise her situation, her relations and her home. Her home, large, dark, straggling, with an atmosphere close and airless, the handsome furniture, picked up at auctions--dead bargains, surrounded by a deep verandah and a bushy garden, full of old apricots, cork trees, dried-up water channels, straggling rose bushes, beds of tomatoes and a few sickly orange trees. She understood and conformed to the daily routine of the household. There was the scrambling breakfast at nine o'clock, at which neither her father nor grandmother appeared. The latter partook of coffee and "hoppers" in the seclusion of her own quarters, and busied herself with the feeding of fine buff fowl, making coffee and condiments, and giving audience and medicine to numbers of native visitors, chiefly the sick and afflicted. Dominga, her red mane in two thick plaits, wearing a dressing-gown and slippers, practised her songs, knitted ties, wrote letters, or lay on her bed, devouring novels and bazaar sweetmeats--such as paras and jalabies--having commandeered the sole punkah coolie. Pussy and Nicky were unaffectedly idle, but Mrs. Chandos, on the other hand, was feverishly busy, whisking in and out of the rooms, herding the servants here and there, scolding every one in her high, far-reaching falsetto. Twelve o'clock was the orthodox visiting hour, and three days after Verona's arrival it brought Mrs. Trotter, Miss Lizzie Trotter, Miss Georgina Louisa Trotter in all their best clothes, to make a formal call. Mrs. Trotter, a worthy, hard-working woman, who always declared that "she knew her place and kept to it," had a round, flat face, resembling a bread platter, the idea being well carried out by a toque in tussore silk. She was obviously abashed on her first introduction to the new Miss Chandos, and stared at her with genuine surprise, but Susan Trotter very soon rallied and found her tongue, and taking a good grip of her self-possession, began: "You and I, Verona----"