When George entered the first of these rooms, ushering in the Colonel, Nouna was as usual lying indolently on a pile of cushions, an attitude which she varied for few of her visitors, certainly not for this old gentleman whom she did not like. She held up to him a condescending hand, however, which he did not detain long in his. The whole atmosphere of the place was evidently disagreeable to him; every object on which his glance rested, from Nouna’s fantastic white costume with red velvet girdle, cap, and slippers, to the tigers on the floor, whose glassy eyes and gleaming fangs reminded him of many a fierce jungle-encounter, seemed to excite in him a new disgust, until Nouna, to make a diversion in a conversation which her antipathy and the vagueness of his answers rendered irksome to her, told her husband to show Lord Florencecourt her new palms, and lazily touching a little bell on a table by her side, fell back quietly on her cushions as a gentle intimation that she was not going to throw away her efforts at entertainment any more. The two gentlemen walked obediently into the adjoining room, which was divided from the first only by gold-coloured silk curtains which were never closed. As they did so, the outer door of the first room was softly opened, and the swarthy white-robed Sundran, walking with noiseless flat-footed tread, crossed the room and laid a little brass tray with porcelain cups and teapot down by her mistress’s side. The Colonel, who was speaking to George, stopped suddenly, as if the thought that moved his words had been suddenly frozen in his brain, while his furrowed face turned at once to that dead greenish grey which, on sallow faces, is the ghastly sign of some strong and horrible emotion. Following the direction of his eyes with a swift glance, George saw that it was the Indian woman who had excited this feeling, and that this time the Colonel’s disgust was more than a reminder--it was a recognition. Lauriston’s first impulse was to call to Sundran, to make her turn, to confront the one with the other, and tear down at one rough blow the mystery which was beginning to wind itself about one side of his life. But the expression on his old friend’s face was too horrible; it was an agony, a terror; for the Colonel’s sake George dared not interfere. Lord Florencecourt, after the first moment, recovered enough self-possession to make a step further back among the plants, as if to admire one of them. But it was plain to his companion that he was merely seeking a stand-point from which he could observe the woman without being seen by her. And as George watched his face under cover of idle remarks about the flowers, he saw that further scrutiny was bringing about in the Colonel’s mind not relief, but certainty.