“It is only some little caprice of hers,” she said persuasively, not guessing that there was any mystery in the matter, and considering the young bride’s conduct as the result of some girlish freak. “I think she was offended because uncle didn’t introduce the boys to her. She will be all right if you leave her alone a few minutes.” But George was not unnaturally annoyed at his wife’s rudeness, and he followed her into the little drawing-room, where he found her with her nose flattened against the window, staring at Lord Florencecourt’s retreating figure. She had no explanation to give of her conduct, but persisted in begging him not to take her to Willingham. As he remained firm on this point, and continued to press her for her reasons, she grew mutinous, and at last peace was only made between them on the conditions that she would go to Willingham if he would not tease her with any more questions. And George had to be content with this arrangement, being above all things anxious to learn the meaning of the miraculous change of front on the part of Lady Florencecourt and her husband. CHAPTER XIX. At dinner at Maple Lodge on the evening of their arrival, George Lauriston and his wife met the gentle Dicky Wood, who had come down the day before, and spent the afternoon riding with the son of Sir Henry’s steward. Nouna was much pleased by this compliance with her wishes, and showed her appreciation of it by flirting very prettily at dinner with the young guardsman. Later in the evening she held in the verandah a little court, and chanted them some half-wild, half-monotonous Indian songs in a tiny thread of sweet voice, with some plaintive low notes that lived in the memory. And George, who was standing with Ella some yards away from the rest of the group, felt thrilled through and through by the weird melodies, and liked to fancy that in these native songs of hers the soul-voice, that, in the tumultuous life of emotions and sensations in which she found her happiness, had small opportunity to be heard, forced up its little note and promised a richer fulness of melody by and by.