These conjectures ran in George’s head and absorbed him so completely, that Nouna, who was sitting in the opposite corner and gazing out of window with a pretty imitation of deep abstraction, found, on turning suddenly to direct his attention to a stack of red-tiled roofs and towering chimneys nestling, in Christmas-card prettiness, among trees in a hollow near the line, something deeply fascinating in the fact that he was, for the first time since their marriage, completely oblivious of her presence. She paused with her mouth open for speech, considering him in wonderment, noting the lines of the frown on his forehead, and the dull, steady outlook of clouded eyes that for once did not see her. Then she stooped forward, and, with her hands on his knees, stretched up to peer closely into his face. He started, and his eyes turned upon her with a look in which she saw, or fancied she saw, so much sternness, that her hands slipped off his knees, and she fell, a meek and frightened human bundle, on to the floor of the carriage. George snatched her up and crushed her tiny limbs against him with a sudden thrill of passionate tenderness in which she discerned at once some new and unknown element. She sunned herself in his caresses for a few moments and then looked inquiringly into his eyes. “You have begun a new wooing,” she whispered, peeping up with languid eyes. “You are very sweet to me, but you seem to be asking me something I don’t understand.” “I don’t know, my darling, whether I could make you understand.” “Kiss me again to prepare me, and then try.” He obeyed the first direction and then set about carrying out the second. “What would you do, my darling, if you had to give up your pretty house, your rooms full of flowers, your dainty marble bath, your French frocks and your crowds of visitors?” Her reply was prompt and crushing, spoken with passionate conviction. “I should die.” Then she turned upon him in alarmed eagerness: “What has happened that I should give them up? They are my own, they are natural to me; it is not right that the granddaughter of a Maharajah should be without these things!” “But supposing you found out that you were enjoying them at the expense of others who had a better right to them still, who were born to them, and had to go without them for your pleasure. Oh, Nouna, you have a generous little heart, you would not bear that!” She shook her head incredulously. “You forget,” said she, “it was through my mother that my fortune came to me. Mamma would never do anything that was not right and just. What she says is mine, that I may enjoy without fear of wrong.”