All the night she had battled with the nightmare horror. Now, with the dawn, came peace: not the peace of acceptance, but cessation of feeling. She mused and pleasured her mind on the mere feast of sight, as, bit by bit, in the familiar places, the tints of her wonderful missal-page room returned to existence for her eye; here the turquoise-blue inlay, with its cool stripe of black and white, there a lance of rose-crimson on the tesselated wall, glowing like the dawn itself amid the surrounding gloom. Across the light shafts of the garden window, there was a dance of flickering leaf shadows. And this greenness set her mind wandering, not in the over-luxuriant, untranquil, full-blossomed Indian garden, but into cool dim English spaces—into some home wood where harebells grew sparsely and the dew glittered grey on bramble-brake and hollow; where last year’s leaves lay thick and all the air was full of the scent of the honest, clean, wholesome soil of England. And as she dreamed her placid waking dream, morning life in the Governor’s palace began to stir about her. Already from the town below the too brief hour of stillness had been some time broken. But these outlandish sounds: the cry of the water-carriers and camel-drivers, the jingle of cow-bells, the blast of the shepherd’s horn, the brazen gong of the temple, had not really broken in upon her thoughts: they had formed rather a background, vague and distant, haunting the sweetness of her far wanderings. Now, however, as the house itself became awake, creepingly, with slinking feet, she called upon sleep again for fear once more of what the day would bring her. * * * * * One came and bent over her, holding his breath. And she feigned unconsciousness. And then she heard him withdraw on exaggerated tiptoe. And next entered the ayah with her tea—Jani, the ayah, who flung wide the windows on the garden side. Early as it was the lilies were throwing up incense to the rising sun-god; it gushed into the room as upon the swing of a censer. And, turning her languid eyes, Rosamond saw how, in the fresh little breeze, the great green banana-leaves waved to and fro across her window against a sky of quivering silver. When Jani returned to the bed, Rosamond handed her the empty cup with a smile. But as Jani took it she looked at her mistress keenly; and, after a second or two, stretched out a stealthy hand and touched the forehead under the masses of golden hair, still heavy, from the night-sweat. The fair brow was cool enough —there was no trace of the ever-dreaded fever in the encircled eyes or on the smooth white face; only the weariness of a long night-watch. But Jani shook her head to herself as she withdrew with her tray; and, meeting Miss Aspasia at the door, she was all for forbidding her entrance. But that young lady was not of those who are turned from their path.