Her face, set riverwards, was soft, yet stern; full of fight, yet full of pity, and Lance thought of a virgin martyr in the illustrated 'Lives of the Saints' with which his grandmother, Lady Carewe, had been wont to still his boyish unrest on Sunday afternoons. Yet there was something beyond that self-concentrated devotion in this face; something that took him back further still to the days when he had sobbed out his childish hurts in his mother's arms. "She was ill all yesterday and the day before--they told me there was no hope of either--they just let them die. And they always put them in the river--they have iron rings round their wrists and ankles to prevent them coming back to harm the men--" She paused and turned to Lance swiftly. "Isn't it true that there are not enough of us--that we want more women to teach them what--" "But I does!" came a high childish treble, forcing itself irresistibly even on the attention of these two; "I 'ikes 'oo twenty 'fowsand times better than dad, an' I 'ikes Captain Dering ten 'fowsand times better too; an' so does 'mum--don't 'oo mummie?" It was little Gladys Smith, who, clasping both Dr. Dillon's hands in hers, had swung herself back from him so as to toss her fair curls from her laughing face, as she looked up at him mutinously. There was an instant's awkward pause, during which the eyes of a man and woman met for a second. Met and parted hastily; but not before the girl with the yellow silk sash, who stood between them, had looked from one to the other with a dim surprise unclosing her red lips, and showing the gleam of her white teeth between them. Then Dr. Dillon said, carelessly, "And you like Akbar Khân better than any of us, you young sinner, because he gives you sweeties! Here! Akbar Khân, bring the Missy-_baba_ some cream toffee!" The old pantaloon, who, with his loose coatee removed and a white duster tucked into Saturn's waist-ring was now helping to hand round coffee and cake, capered up with a voluble, but toothless,-- "_Ger-reeb--pun-wâz!_" (Protector of the Poor.) Gladys helped herself discriminately, staring at the old servitor the while. "But I don't 'ike Akbar Khân. Do I, son of an owl?" she continued superbly, in the accurate Urdu which comes so daintily from lisping English babies. "Did I not say I would hate thee because thou wouldst not tell me why thou didst prostrate thyself before the soldier in the courtyard? And the _ayah_ laughed, the base-born! She knew also, and would not say, and so did the soldier; so I hate you all!" She stamped her little foot, and shook her curls defiantly. "Gladys!" cried her mother, reproachfully. "Hullo! What's all this about?" laughed Captain Dering, catching the child up in his arms. "One of my soldiers insulting you? Who was it?" He turned, with the absolute command of his race, to the be-ringed one, who stood, full of deprecatory mumblings and salaamings, his hands, holding the tray of sweets, trembling visibly.