“No bathing to-day, Mab!” laughed Georgia, meeting Mabel in her riding-habit in the hall. “You mean that we can’t ride? Why not?” “Now you look just like the prehistoric lady in the picture! Because there’s a dust-storm coming on. I meant to tell you before, but you rushed away from the breakfast-table so quickly. I have been hurrying Dick off, that he may get to the office before it begins.” “But how do you know there’s going to be a dust-storm at all? I thought that before they came on the sky was copper-coloured, and the air got like an oven?” “Well, the sky is getting black, as you can see. Dust-storms here are not confined to the hot weather, they come all the year round. It’s the merest chance that there hasn’t been one yet since you arrived.” “How horrid that it should come just to-day!” said Mabel snappishly. “I told Mr Anstruther I was tired of riding Simorgh, and he must really bring Laili back. He said he couldn’t be sure she was cured yet, and I told him he might use a leading-rein if he liked, but that I meant to ride her. We weren’t going at all near the frontier, or anywhere in the direction of Dera Gul.” “My beloved Mab, dust-storms don’t respect British territory, and if you had once been out in one you wouldn’t wish to repeat the experience, even if you were in a position to do it. Go and take your habit off, and when Mr Anstruther comes, I will tell him to send the horses to the stables, and wait here until the storm is over. Then you will have some one to talk to. See that the servants shut all your windows.” But when Mabel emerged again from her darkened room into the lighted hall, the disappointment caused by the loss of her ride was mingled with a certain amount of ill-humour, due to an even more untoward occurrence. The ayah Tara had chosen this particular morning for passing in review all her mistress’s best gowns and hats, with an eye to any little repairs that might be necessary, and having taken the garments from their respective boxes and spread them out all over the room, had sat down to contemplate them for a while before setting to work. She was not accustomed to the peculiarities of the Khemistan climate, and the gathering darkness appeared to her only as the precursor of a thunderstorm. Hence, when the first gust of raging wind whirled a cloud of gritty dust through the open windows, she was as much astonished as Mabel herself, who was entering the room at the moment, and was almost knocked down. Both mistress and maid flew at once to shut the windows, but in the wind and darkness this was by no means an easy task, and before it could be accomplished the dust lay thick all over the room and its contents. Such a _contretemps_ was enough to provoke a saint, Mabel said to herself angrily, when she had left the weeping Tara to do what she could to repair the mischief, and it would be idle to deny that she was feeling very cross indeed as she entered the drawing-room with a bundle of letters in her hand.