“That wasn’t what I meant. I will take five or six of the servants and ride beside you. Then I shall wait in the men’s part of the Palace while you go to see the Queen, and bring you back again. You won’t find me leaving the place without you.” “I’m afraid you’ll find it rather dull. We shan’t be able to talk, you know. But of course I should like it much better if you were there. You will come, then?” “Rather. If you will run into danger, you shall not go alone--now.” “Your permission is slightly grudging,” said Georgia, laughing, but she was heartily glad to have his escort. The unpleasant circumstances of her last visit to the Palace had made her shrink from going there again, although she had a particular reason for desiring to do so. The thought that Dick would not be far off was a reassuring one, even though there was no reason for anticipating any unfriendliness from the royal household. And in this way it came to pass that when the Palace litter, closely guarded by soldiers, conveyed Georgia and her handmaid to visit her patient, Dick rode behind it with six of the servants of the Mission, who were divided between delight at being outside the walls of the house once more, and a certain degree of terror at the prospect of finding themselves inside the Palace. Reclining luxuriously on the cushions, with Rahah crouching opposite to her, Georgia spent the time occupied by the transit in recapitulating to herself the points of the inquiry which she was anxious to make, and which had as its primary object the re-establishment of Sir Dugald’s health. The disagreeable interruption of her interview with Nur Jahan’s mother, by the entrance of the King’s younger wife, had prevented her from putting to the women present the questions which had been suggested to her by their mention of the witch whose poisons Fath-ud-Din was wont to employ to rid him of his enemies. The name and dwelling-place of this old woman had become matters of the deepest interest to Georgia, and she was also eager for any information that it might be possible to obtain as to her methods and the poisons she used. On what she could discover this morning, Sir Dugald’s life, or at any rate, his restoration to health, might depend, and this in itself was enough to determine Georgia to leave no stone unturned in the effort to ensure success. But it must be confessed that she had an additional motive--a sufficiently weighty one, although completely secondary--and this was the subjugation, or conviction, or conversion, whichever it might be called, of Dick. She did not give the process any of these names in her own mind, but she recognised that in the present state of affairs between them the old difference of opinion was only lying dormant, and that sooner or later it must revive. Shrinking with all her heart from the idea of paining, or even opposing him, she was none the less aware that any surrender on her part would only bring her grief and remorse later, and she