Rajah Nehal Singh of course accepted the invitation sent him, and scarcely a week passed before the eventful evening arrived toward which more than one looked forward with eager anticipation--not least Mrs. Cary, who saw in every large entertainment a fresh opportunity for Beatrice to carry out her own particular campaign. It was therefore, as Mrs. Cary angrily declared, a fresh dispensation of an unfriendly Providence that on the very same day Beatrice fell ill. What malady had her in its clutches was more than her distracted and aggrieved mother could say. She sat before her writing-table, playing idly with a curiously cut stone, and appeared the picture of health. Yet she was ill--she repeated it obstinately and without variation a dozen times in response to Mrs. Cary's persistent protests. "You don't _look_ ill," Mrs. Cary exclaimed in exasperation as, arrayed in her newest wonder from Paris, she came to say good-by. "I can't think what's the matter with you, and you won't explain. Have you got a pain anywhere?--Have you a headache? For goodness' sake, say something, child!" Beatrice looked at her mother calmly, and a curious mixture of bitterness and amusement crept into her expression as her eyes wandered over the bulk in mauve satin to the red face with the indignant little eyes. "What do you want me to say?" she asked. "I can't explain pains I haven't got." "If you haven't got any pains, then you aren't ill." Beatrice laughed. "That shows how ignorant you are of the human constitution, my dear mother," she said. "The worst illnesses are painless--at least, in your sense of the word." "I am not so ignorant as not to know one thing--and that is you are simply shamming!" burst out the elder woman, with a vicious tug at her straining gloves. "Shamming just to aggravate me, too! You do it to spite me. You are a bad daughter--" Beatrice turned round so sharply that Mrs. Cary broke off in the middle of her abuse with a gasp. "I do nothing to aggravate or spite you," Beatrice said, with a calm which her eyes belied. "I have never gone against you in the whole course of my life. What have I done since we have been here but play an obedient fiddle to Mr. Travers' will, in order that your position might not be endangered--" "_Our_ position," interposed Mrs. Cary hurriedly. "No, _your_ position. There may have been a time when I cared, too, but I don't now. I have ceased caring for anything. To suit Mr. Travers, I have fooled, and continue to fool, a man who has never harmed me in his life. I move heaven and earth to come between two people for whom alone in this whole place, I have a glimmer of respect." "Respect!" jeered Mrs. Cary.