After the engineer's departure Noreen seldom saw the Rajah, and then only at official entertainments, to which his position gained him invitations. He spoke to her once or twice at these receptions, but as a rule she contrived to elude him. So far she had got on very well with Mrs. Smith. Their wills had never clashed, for the girl unselfishly gave in to her friend whenever the latter demanded it, which was often enough. Ida's ways were certainly not Noreen's, and the latter sometimes felt tempted to disapprove of her excessive familiarity with Captain Bain and one or two others. But the next moment she took herself severely to task for being censorious of the elder woman, who must surely know better how to behave towards men than a young unmarried girl who had been buried so long in the jungle. And Ida did not guess why sometimes her repentant little friend's caresses were so fervent and her desire to please her so manifest, and ascribed it all to her own sweetness of nature. The coming of the Rains did not check the gaiety of the dwellers on the mountain-tops, though torrential downpours had to be faced on black nights in shrouded rickshas and dripping _dandies_, though incessant lightning lit up the road to the club or theatre, and the thunder made it difficult to hear the music of the band in the ballroom. Noreen missed nothing of the revels. But in all the whirl of gaiety and pleasure in which her days were passed her thoughts turned more and more to the great forest lying thousands of feet below her, and the man who passed his lonely days therein. Little news of him came to her. He never wrote, and her brother seldom mentioned him in his letters; for during Parker's absence on two months' privilege leave from Ranga Duar Dermot did not quit it often and very rarely visited the planters' club or the bungalows of any of its members. And Noreen wanted news of him. Much as she saw of other men now--many of them attractive and some of whom she frankly liked--none had effaced Dermot's image or displaced him from the shrine that she had built for him in her inmost heart. Mingled with her love was hero-worship. She dared not hope that he could ever be interested in or care for any one as shallow-minded as she. She could not picture him descending from the pedestal on which she had placed him to raise so ordinary a girl to his heart. She could not fancy him in the light, frothy life of Darjeeling. She judged him too serious to care for frivolities, and it inspired her with a little awe of him and a fear that he would despise her as a feather-brained, silly woman if he saw how she enjoyed the amusements of the hill-station. But she felt that she would gladly exchange the gaieties and cool climate of Darjeeling for the torments of the Terai again, if only it would bring him to her side. For sometimes the longing to see him grew almost unbearable.