"This very hour," he assured her, his smile unruffled. "But I can't. 'Rien ne va plus,' as they say at another game. Do you know what that means?" "At Monte Carlo?" "No! in Sar? It means winter, I'm afraid." "Winter!" she exclaimed, her resentment embarrassed by the man's imperturbable temper, and her interest provoked by his voice. "I'm going down with Sir Colvin." "Yes!" he said. "And when will that be?" "When he's done here." "Yes!" he said again, "but that hardly puts a date to it. I can give you one for the snow." "Look here!" she cried--and the little imperious words, with their little imperious manner, made suddenly a bond of battle between them--"you haven't been here a day, and you've set every one foaming. Do you know that?" "Yes," he said humbly. "I'm afraid I've put my foot into it all round." "Well!" she exclaimed. "Do you want me against you too?" He shook his head gravely. "Heaven forbid!" he said. "But you're against me already." She rose, lifted her riding-whip from the table and took her skirt in her hand. "Yes, I am!" she said. She moved towards the verandah, visible through the carved screen of wood that filled a part of the wall: stopping before a quaint Cashmiri mirror that hung upon it to set her hat straight and tie her veil. Terrington's eyes followed her as he stirred his tea. "Where do you ride?" he asked, as she went towards the door. She turned in the entrance, facing him, against the crimson folds of the purdah. "Everywhere," she said. "You'll have to give it up," he announced tranquilly. She stood an instant longer, her lithe brown figure framed in the curtains' crimson and gold, to let him realize the defiance under her lowered eyelids and the scorn of her little lifted chin. Then she pushed back the purdah and stepped out into the sun. III Whatever regret may have sounded in Terrington's admission, he did nothing to mitigate the inconvenience of the boot he had thrust into Sar. He reorganized the service of spies which had been of such use to him five years before; but the difficulties in picking up the threads, which had then been complacent to his fingers, taught him more than was told by those on which he could lay his hands. The rise in the price of treachery, and the trivial details it could profess to furnish, warned him not only of the nearness and wide-spread intimation of an outbreak, but of a native confidence in its success. He had sufficient belief in the extractive qualities of a bribe to expect a few days' notice of the final explosion, when a knowledge of the plot should have reached the more servile of his informants. Meanwhile he could only listen to its developments in the dark.