She seemed ill at ease and frightened: the daughter of an English gentleman and an Indian princess, her wayward course of life had reduced her native grace and dignity to mere accidents of mood, and a check or a disappointment made her destitute of either. George was horror-struck, and could not speak, but stood waiting for her to explain the object of her visit. From the moment of her entrance, he had forgotten her connection with Nouna; he was brought back to startled recollection by her first words, which were spoken in a querulous, tearful voice. “Well, you have sent to ask me where is your wife. It is I who come to ask where is my child?” “Nouna!” exclaimed George in a low voice. “You do not know where she is?” “No. You have spoilt her for her mother, you have made her look down upon me, fear me. And what have you done for her yourself? What has she become through you? How have you kept your fine promises to me? You were too proud to take my money; it was too base for your fine fingers to touch; she was to be rich, and honoured, and happy through you! And what happens? What happens, I say?” Her excitement was increasing as she talked, until the low tones he had admired in her voice became shrill and nasal, and the great brown eyes, which had looked languishing and seductive when she raised and lowered them artfully between thick fringes of long black lashes, now flamed and flashed in her dry, parched skin like fires in a desert. “You fling away all your chances, you go to work as a common clerk, you make her--my daughter, _my_ beautiful daughter--live like a dressmaker in two wretched rooms, and then you let her be carried off from you under your very nose, so that she comes back to me ill, miserable, her beauty spoilt, her heart breaking--the wife of a criminal.” In the course of her violent speech this woman had wrung his heart again and again, not by her reproaches, but by the pictures she had called up of Nouna. What had the poor child learnt about her mother? How had she borne it? She had been shocked, disgusted, so he gathered. Poor little thing, poor little thing! And what had she learnt about him? So his thoughts ran in a running commentary, and when Chloris White stopped, moaning to herself in bitter scorn and anger, he had to clear his throat again and again before he could speak. “Then she is with you?” he said at last huskily. The woman raised her head in fierce petulance. “No, no, no, I tell you. She is not with me--she has left me, and I don’t know where she has gone.”