She curtseyed to the two merchants, and led the way back through the front room with a gesture to the young Englishman to follow her, as Lauriston did, after taking a hasty leave of his host. The girl seemed to be in such a subdued, sleepy mood that he was prepared for her to behave in a more conventional manner than usual. He was quite off his guard therefore when, having reached the top of the staircase, she suddenly swept round, her white garments swirling after her, and threw herself like a panther upon him, with such electric suddenness and force that, if his hand had not been upon the stair-rail, he would have fallen down the stairs. She was curled about him, her feet off the ground, her arms round his neck, her breast against his. It was such an altogether unlooked for and bewildering proceeding that Lauriston, after a moment’s choking sensation, put his arms round her, carried her to the door of her smaller sitting-room, and attempted to put her down on her feet. As she resisted and refused to stand, he looked round him, and seeing a chair against the wall, placed her, still limp and apparently helpless, very gently upon it, and laid his fingers on the handle of the sitting-room door. The little lady sprang back into vigorous life immediately. “You are not going in!” she said in a hissing whisper, her face full of alarm and disappointment; “Mrs. Ellis is in there!” “That is why I’m going in. I came to see Mrs. Ellis, not you.” For a moment the girl looked ready to burst into tears, but with another change of mood she slid off her chair and came up to him, laughing. “Are all Englishmen like you, all stone and steel? or has poor little Nouna fallen upon the very hardest?” she asked, her tone changing from playful to plaintive before she had finished speaking. And she folded her small hands one in the other and looked up with a face so doleful that Lauriston wanted to laugh. “Mamma says Englishmen are noble and brave and good, and so I thought--when I saw you, and you were kind and sweet to me--that you were perhaps sent to me--coming so suddenly in the midst of my sleep--the great Rajah mamma said I was to wait for and obey and humble myself to, as a woman should to her lord. She said he would come certainly if I was very good, and I had been good for nearly three weeks, and had given Mrs. Ellis hardly any trouble at all; so I thought, you see,” she said, looking up into his face naïvely, “that you were the Rajah. Well, I was wrong, that’s all. You prefer Mrs. Ellis.”