'Show the woman into the Miss Sahib's office,' cried the Colonel fussily. 'Rose, my dear----' But the girl had taken the opportunity of escaping through the open French window. 'Please don't mind,' said Mrs. Boynton. 'I know my way about this house--at any rate I ought to, seeing how hospitable and good you have been always. Good-bye. I hope your interview will prove more pleasant than mine is likely to be.' Their ponies were waiting, and she stayed to see them start and give a parting nod as they rounded the last visible turn of the path leading to the Mall. Gwen always added these pleasant friendly touches to the bareness and business of life. They came to her by instinct, and she herself felt cold and cheerless without them. Then, very well satisfied with herself, she crossed the long matted passage which ran from end to end of the house, separating the portion Colonel Tweedie reserved for his own use from that occupied by the office. Here, beside her father's private room, was Rose's little study, and beyond that again Lewis Gordon's quarters and the big glazed verandah where the clerks sat designing. It was quite a small room, and, as Mrs. Boynton entered it, seemed to her over full of perfume, possibly from the vase full of wild turk's-cap lilies on the table. The window was shut too, and Gwen as she made her way to the most comfortable chair, with scarcely a glance at the white-robed figure standing in the shadow of the curtains, gave a quick yet languid order to set the glazed doors wide open. 'They are best shut if the Huzoor does not mind. I have that to say which requires caution.' Those round, suave tones, with almost the nightingale thrill in them belonged to no ayah, surely! Gwen looked round hastily. That was no ayah's figure either, tall, supple, unabashed. Instinctively the Englishwoman stood up and confronted her visitor, more curious than alarmed. Even to that ignorance of native life which is so typical of the mem-sahib--an ignorance not altogether to be deprecated--the woman's trade was unmistakable. That was writ large in the trimness and cleanliness, the spotless white, the chaplets of flowers, the scent of musk and ambergris filling the room; all the more reason for surprise at her presence there. Yet, even so, curiosity outweighed indignation and resentment in Gwen's cold questioning. 'Who are you? What do you want?' The answer came quick, so quickly that it left the hearer with that breathless sense of pained relief that the worst is over, which comes with the clean sharp cut of a surgeon's knife. 'I am Chândni of Delhi. I want the Hodinuggur pearls which the Huzoor took out of the Ayôdhya pot.' There was no mincing of the matter here; none of that beating about the bush which, as a rule, Gwen loved. Yet the directness did not displease her; it seemed to rouse in her a novel combativeness, taking form in similar effrontery and cool assertion.