The girl came in, humming a tune. She was perhaps seventeen, and resembled her divorced mother, the resident's first wife, a good-looking half-caste, who was now living in Batavia, where she was said to keep a discreet gaming house. The young girl had a pale olive complexion, sometimes just touched with a peach-like blush; she had beautiful black hair, curling naturally at the temples and wound round her head in a heavy coil; her black pupils and sparkling irises swam in humid bluish-whites, over which her thick lashes flickered up and down, and up again. Her mouth was small and a little full; and her upper lip was just shadowed by a dark, downy line. She was not tall and was already too fully formed, like a hasty rose that has bloomed too soon. She wore a white piqué skirt and a white linen blouse with lace insertions; and round her throat was a bright yellow ribbon that accorded well with her olive pallor, which sometimes flushed up, suddenly, as with a rush of warm blood. The young man came sauntering in from the front verandah. He was like his father, tall, broad and fair-haired, with a thick, fair moustache. He was barely twenty-three, but looked quite five years older. He wore a suit of white Russian linen, but with a shirt-collar and tie. Van Oudijck also came at last: his firm step approached as though he were always busy, as though he were now coming just to have some dinner in the midst of his work. "When does mamma arrive to-morrow?" asked Theo. "At half-past eleven," replied Van Oudijck; and, turning to his body-servant behind him, "Kario, remember that the mem-sahib is to be fetched from the station at half-past eleven to-morrow." "Yes, excellency," murmured Kario. The fish was served. "Doddie," asked Van Oudijck, "who was with you at the gate just now?" "At ... the gate?" she asked slowly, in a very soft accent. "Yes." "At ... the gate?... Nobody.... Theo perhaps." "Were you at the gate with your sister?" asked Van Oudijck. The boy knitted his thick, fair eyebrows: "Possibly.... Don't know.... Don't remember...." They were all three silent. They hurried through dinner: sitting at table bored them. The five or six servants, in white cotton jackets with red linen facings, moved softly on their flat toes, waiting quickly and noiselessly. Steak and salad was served, and a pudding, followed by dessert. "Everlasting rumpsteak!" Theo muttered. "Yes, that cook!" laughed Doddie, with her little throaty laugh, clipping her sentences in the half-caste fashion. "She always gives steak, when mamma not here; doesn't matter to her, when mamma not here. She has no imagination. Too bad though!" They had been twenty minutes over their dinner when Van Oudijck went back to his office. Doddie and Theo sauntered towards the front of the house. "Tedious," Doddie yawned. "Come, we play billiards?" In the first inner gallery, behind the satin portière, was a small billiard-table. "Come along," said Theo. They played.