"A _protégée_ of John's. He got her out of trouble somewhere. He says he has the biggest lot of miscreants on the frontier on his works. They don't look much, I must allow; but this woman seems to like me. She has such a jolly baby. I had to doctor it last week. How's Nuttu to-day, Kirpo?" The woman, grinning, opened her veil and displayed a sleeping child. "Isn't he pretty, Philip?" said Belle softly. "And see, they have pierced his nose and ears like a girl's." "For luck, I suppose. May God spare him to manhood," prefaced Philip piously, in native fashion before he asked the mother if it were not so. She shook her head. "No, Protector of the poor! All my boys are healthy. He is called Nuttu, so that as he thrives some one else of the same name may dwindle and pine. That is why." She hugged the baby to her with an odd smile. "She could not have meant that there was really another child whose death she desired," said Belle as they went on. "I would not answer for it if I were you. They are a queer people. By Jove! How that woman does hate some one; I'm glad it isn't you, Belle!" And Kirpo looking after them was saying in her turn that they were very queer people. If he was her lover why did the _mem_ look so unhappy? The _sahib logue_ did not cut off their wives' noses, or put them in prison; so what did it matter? Truly those two were compassed about by a strange cloud of witnesses as they strolled homewards. Perhaps the civilised world would have judged them as harshly. But no tribunal, human or divine, could have judged Belle more harshly than she did herself; and herein lay all the trouble. She could not accept facts and make the best of them. John Raby coming in later found the two reading solemnly, one on either side of the fire, and told them they were horribly unsociable. "I couldn't get away before," he said. "Afzul wanted a day's leave and I had to measure up before he started." "Has he gone already? I'm sorry," remarked Philip. "I wished to see him before I leave tomorrow." "To-morrow!" John Raby looked from one to another. "Have you been quarrelling?" And poor Belle, with the necessity for derisive denial before her, felt more than ever that she was on the broad path leading to destruction. "I am sorry I have to go," said Philip with perfect truth; "but I really am of no use here." CHAPTER XXII. Could Philip Marsden have seen into Mahomed Lateef's old tower about the time he was leaving Nilgunj his regrets might have had a still more truthful ring, and Belle might have been saved from once more adding to the difficulties of her own lot, and, as it were, making a stumbling-block of her own good intentions. For in that case, Major Marsden would have stopped another day in order to see his old friend, and in the course of conversation would have heard things which might have changed the current of subsequent events; but Fate decreed otherwise.