George started, and the offer confirmed him in his resolution to have nothing to do with this woman. He thought it proved conclusively that she had been bought by Rahas, but that she was willing to betray him if she could get her price; and though he did her the justice to believe in the sincerity of her devotion to her young mistress, he knew how much more harm than good it was likely to do his poor little _fiancée_. As he repeated that it was impossible for him to comply with her request, the dark face of the Indian woman grew hideous with baffled passion. She retreated a few paces and showed her teeth at him like an angry ape; then twirling her lamp twice round her head with some muttered, inarticulate words, as if she were repeating an incantation, she turned her back upon him and slunk stealthily up stairs like a wild animal thwarted in a search for its young. George left the house with shuddering thankfulness that Nouna had escaped from her perilous associations. “Marriage, thank heaven,” thought he, “works such changes in a woman that it will drive them all out of her head and fill her heart and mind with new thoughts and feelings.” And of course he forgot that marriage can work changes in a man too. CHAPTER X. The next morning, before he was up, George Lauriston was surprised by an apparition in a dressing-gown, with a black eye and a strip of sticking-plaister across its upper lip. It proved to be Clarence Massey, who came up to his bedside to offer to smoke the pipe of peace while yet the soft influence of slumber might be supposed to mollify any desire for vengeance which might haply be still burning in his comrade’s breast. As a matter of fact, George had, before retiring to rest the night before, regretted his violence to the little Irish lad, and was ready to meet him more than half-way. So that when Massey humbly made a clean breast of the trick he had played, valiantly omitting all mention of Dicky Wood’s share in it, and apologised for his intrusion into Lauriston’s quarters the evening before, the latter held out his hand from the bed and told him not to think any more about it. “I’m awfully sorry I was so rough with you, old chap,” said he. “It was all a misunderstanding from beginning to end. Nouna is so young, and knows so little of the world, that she hasn’t dignity enough yet to awe an Irishman. She’ll know better when she’s married; and if you don’t come to our wedding, at least you must be the first to congratulate us afterwards, Massey, since it was you who brought about our first meeting.” But Massey’s jaw had dropped. “Wedding! You don’t really mean you’re going to marry her, Lauriston!” he cried in too evident consternation. “Certainly I mean it; why not?” said George, very quietly, though he had suddenly grown thoroughly awake. “Oh, no reason, of course. I beg your pardon. I was only surprised because we hadn’t heard anything about it, you know.”