“Well, well, she is your friend--a school-fellow, too--though _you_ must have been in the infant-school, so I’ll say no more--but you know I am not double-faced, and I cannot abide her, and her airs, and her schemes, and her always pushing herself to the front, and sitting in the general’s pew, and being the first to ask that Austrian prince to dinner, and getting up at parties and sailing out before the commissioner’s wife--such impudence!--and people put up with her. If poor little Mrs. Jones was to do such things--and she has a better right, being an honourable’s daughter--I’d like to know what would be said? But there’s no fear of Mrs. Jones; there’s no brass about _her_,” and Mrs. Brande gave a bounce, that made the cee-springs quiver! “Now, Mrs. Brande, you forget that Ida is my friend.” “Ay, and better be her friend than her enemy! Well, here is my turn, and here we part”; and, with a valedictory wave of her podgy hand, in another instant Mrs. Brande was thundering down the narrow road that led to the best house in Sharani--her own comfortable, hospitable dwelling. Mrs. Sladen posted her letter, and went on to the club and reading-room, a long, low building overlooking a series of terraces and tennis-courts, and the chief resort of the whole station. As she entered the gate, she encountered an elderly gentleman, with beetling brows, a coarse grey moustache, and a portly figure, riding a stout black pony. “Been looking for you everywhere,” he bellowed; “where the mischief have you been? Swilling tea as usual, I suppose? Soper and Rhodes are coming to take ‘pot luck,’ so go home at once--and, I say, I hear there is fish at Manockjees’, just come up; call in on your way, and fetch it in the rickshaw.” Exit Colonel Sladen to his evening rubber; exit Mrs. Sladen to carry home much-travelled fish, and possibly to cook the chief portion of the dinner. CHAPTER III. “OTHER PEOPLE HAS NIECES TOO.” Mrs. Sladen had not only given Mrs. Brande a piece of news; she had introduced her to a grand idea--an idea that took root and grew and flourished in that lady’s somewhat empty mind, as she sat alone in her drawing-room over a pleasant wood-fire, which she shared impartially with a sleek, self-conscious fox-terrier.