"If that was a trick, Mr Chumbley," said Grey, gazing at him keenly, "it is very cruel of you!" "But it wasn't a trick, Miss Stuart. She sent me to fetch him. The poor little woman was getting miserable because the doctor was so attentive to you." "Oh, Mr Chumbley, what nonsense," said Grey, colouring. "It is too absurd!" "So it is," he replied; "but that isn't." She followed the direction of his eyes as he fixed them on Captain Hilton and Helen Perowne, and then, with the flush dying out of her cheeks, she looked at him inquiringly. "I say, Miss Stuart," he drawled, "don't call me a mischief-maker, please." "Certainly not. Why should I?" "Because I get chattering to people about Miss Perowne. I wish she'd marry somebody. I say, hasn't she hooked Bertie Hilton?" There was no reply, and Chumbley went on: "I mean to tell him he's an idiot when he gets back to quarters to-night. I don't believe Helen Perowne cares a _sou_ for him. She keeps leading him on till the poor fellow doesn't know whether he stands on his head or his heels, and by-and-by she'll pitch him over." Grey bent her head a little lower, for there seemed to be a knot in the work upon which she was engaged, but she did not speak. "I say, Miss Stuart, look at our coffee-coloured friend. Just you watch his eyes. I'll be hanged if I don't think there'll be a row between him and Hilton. He looks quite dangerous!" "Oh, Mr Chumbley!" cried Grey, gazing at him as if horrified at his words. "Well, I shouldn't wonder," he continued. "Helen Perowne has been leading him on, and now he has been cut to make room for Hilton. These Malay chaps don't understand this sort of thing, especially as they all seem born with the idea that we are a set of common white people, and that one Malay is worth a dozen of us." "Do--do you think there is danger?" said Grey hoarsely. "Well, no, perhaps not danger," replied Chumbley, coolly; "but things might turn ugly if they went on. And it's my belief that, if my lady there does not take care, she'll find herself in a mess." A more general mingling of the occupants of the drawing-room put an end to the various _tete-a-tetes_, and Grey Stuart's present anxiety was somewhat abated; but she did not feel any the more at rest upon seeing that the young rajah had softly approached Hilton, and was smiling at him in an innocently bland way, bending towards him as he spoke, and keeping very close to his side for the rest of the evening. At last "good-byes" were said, and the party separated, the two young officers walking slowly down towards the landing-stage, to enter a native boat and be rowed to their quarters on the Residency island. The heat was very great, and but little was said for some minutes, during which Hilton was rapturously thinking of the beauty of Helen's eyes. "I say, Chum," he said suddenly. "Murad has invited me to go on a hunting-trip with him in the interior. Would you go?"