"I wish he hadn't," Stafford said, his good-natured face darkening. "It seems unfair that he should have caused our people to suffer so much and we have never had the chance to pay back. Whatever made the Government give his son the power, goodness only knows." "The present Rajah was a baby then," she said in a tone of gentle remonstrance. "It would have been hard to have punished him for the sins of his father." Nothing appeals to a man more than a woman's undiplomatic tenderness for the whole world. Stafford looked down at Lois with a smile. "You dear, good-hearted little girl!" he said. "And yet, blood is blood, you know. Somehow, one can't get over it. In spite of his good looks, it always seems to me as though I could see his father's treachery in Nehal Singh's eyes. It made me sick to think that I was enjoying his hospitality--it makes me feel worse that we have to accept the club-house at his hands. Travers behaved pretty badly, according to my ideas." "It was mostly Miss Cary's doing," Lois objected. She liked Travers, and was inclined to take up the cudgels on his behalf. Stafford's eyes twinkled. On his side he had the rooted and not unfounded masculine notion that all women are jealous of one another. "Miss Cary is young and inexperienced and probably did not realize what she was doing," he retorted. "From what she told me, she takes the whole matter as a big joke, and now that the fat is in the fire it's no use enlightening her." Lois made no immediate answer, though she may have had her doubts on the subject of Beatrice Cary's inexperience. "The poor Rajah!" she said, after a pause, as Stafford walked curiously about the room. "I could not help being sorry for him. He seemed so eager and enthusiastic and anxious to please us, and we were so cold and ungrateful. Tell me, does it really make so much difference?" He came back to her side. Something in her voice had touched him and stirred to life a warmth of feeling which was more than that of friendship. "What makes so much difference?" he asked, smiling down at her small troubled face. "What are you worrying yourself about now?" "Oh, it has always troubled me," she answered with the impetuosity which characterized her. "I have often worried about it. I mean," she added, as he laughed at her incoherence, "all that race distinction. Does it really mean so much? Will it never be bridged over?" "Never," he said. "It can't be. It is a justified distinction and to my mind those who ignore it are to be despised." He had answered her question with only a part seriousness, his whole interest concentrated on the charm of her personality. But for once her gravity resisted the suppressed merriment in his eyes. "Are the natives, then, so contemptible?" she asked.