When the camels had come and the party was preparing to mount and start back home, a crowd of villagers, led by their old priest, bore down upon them. Learning that Frank was the slayer of the sacrilegious crocodile the holy man hung a garland of marigolds round his neck and through the interpreter offered him the thanks of gods and men for his good deed. And to a chorus of blessings and compliments he rode away with his companions. So ended the incident--apparently. But consequences undreamed of by any of the actors in it flowed from it. For imperceptibly it brought a change into the relations between Mrs. Norton and Wargrave and eventually altered them completely. At first it merely seemed to strengthen their friendship and increase the feeling of intimacy. To Violet--they were Violet and Frank to each other now--the saving of her life constituted a bond that could never be severed. He had preserved her from a horrible death and she owed Wargrave more than gratitude. Hitherto she had often toyed with the idea of him as a lover, and the thought had been a pleasant one. But it had hardly occurred to her to be in love with him in return. In all her life up to now she had never known what it was to really love. She had married without affection. Her girlhood had been passed without the mildest flirtation; for she had been brought up in a quiet country village where there never seemed to be any bachelors of her own class between the ages of seventeen and fifty. Even the curate was grey-haired and married. She had made up for this deprivation during the voyage out to India and her season in Calcutta; but, although she had found many men ready to flirt with her, Norton's proposal was the only serious one that she had had and she accepted him in desperation. She had never felt any love for him. She did not realise that he had any for her; for, although he really entertained a sincere affection of a kind for her, it was so seldom and so badly expressed that she was never aware of its existence. Since her marriage she had had several careless flirtations during her visits to her relatives in Calcutta; but her heart was not seriously affected.