Now in all of this there was more than a little, for, apart from her natural inclination to have as good a time as possible, here amid entirely new conditions of life, and forming as they did a marked contrast to those of a country vicarage, Cynthia had kept her ears open as well as her eyes. Even station _gup_ had not as yet linked Raynier's name with that of Hilda Clive. But it had speculated as to the view that would be taken at headquarters of the Political Agent allowing himself to be lulled into a state of absolute blindness on the subject of the ill-affectedness of the Gularzai; the most important and powerful tribe within his jurisdiction. All of which Cynthia had not been slow to take in; and Captain Beecher, who was always on hand with his dogcart, or a very sleek and serviceable Waler--of which she was secretly afraid--if she preferred riding, was very devoted, and substantially sound, and Cynthia was verging on thirty. And a live and frisky dog was very much better than a dead and reduced lion, and Haslam was an abominable cynic who knew his India, and the dominant population thereof, thoroughly. Hilda Clive, watching this state of things, said nothing, only thought. So completely did she say nothing in fact, that the station decided that in view of the circumstances of the case, she was singularly lacking in appreciation, not to say gratitude. She and Raynier had been together through the winnowing of a common danger. She had come out of it safe and sound, he had not. Yet she seemed to give him no further thought. Did she not? "All are forgetting him," she said to herself, in the bitterness of her intense self-concentration. "All are forgetting him--even decrying him, and there are those hungrily ready to step into his shoes. All the more reason to show him that here is one who is not." She thanked Heaven she was well off; indeed, for a single woman, almost rich. Nothing can be done in this world without filthy lucre. She had been endowed with this if not with the art of drawing men round her like flies around a jar of stale marmalade. Money can buy anything within certain limits, even life. Yet how many there would have expended say one thousand rupees to purchase that of Herbert Raynier's?