'Never mind what you thought,' she put in decidedly: 'it isn't quite settled yet; but it is going to be. Oh yes! it is going to be!' 'Well!' said Sir George--recovering himself for the usual formula,--'he is a very lucky fellow! But it is--er--all the more likely to be so, because, curiously enough, I have been told to offer Mr. Raymond the trusteeship of the old Thakoor of Dhurmkote's affairs. In fact, the old man refused pointblank to have any one else, and as we want him to retrench and adopt an heir properly----' 'My dear George!' exclaimed Lady Arbuthnot, 'how perfectly delightful!--it--it will settle everything!' 'Yes; I--I suppose it will,' replied Sir George dubiously, and then his sober common sense came to the front--'not, my dear, that I exactly see what had to--to--er--be settled.' 'No! perhaps not,' said Grace thoughtfully, 'but it will, all the same.' With which mysterious remark she went off to set springes for that Love with a big L, which _was_ to settle all things. She was an expert in the art, as women of her type always are, and yet the days passed without bringing her success. For something, of which she knew nothing, stood between those two. Put briefly, it was a _râm-rucki_. And so when they met--which was inevitably often, under Lady Arbuthnot's skilful hands--they talked of everything under the sun--of their adventure together, of the extraordinary way in which Fate had favoured them, of Chris Davenant and Jân-Ali-shân's mysterious disappearances, of the pearls, and the signet of royalty that was not to be found anywhere. They even talked of the Thakoor of Dhurmkote, and the almost endless interest and power of such a life as that now offered to Jack Raymond--they even quarrelled over his hesitancy in accepting it; but they never talked of what Lesley had asked him to forget--what she had stigmatised scornfully as the 'rest of it.' Grace became almost tearful over the fact. It seemed to her at last as if, even here, hers was not to be the hand to wile Jack Raymond back either to duty or pleasure. And it was not. That task was reserved for a simpler hand; a hand that had neither clutched nor refused, the hand of a woman to whom 'the rest of it' was neither to be despised nor overestimated, and who had neither scorned it nor sought for it. It was Auntie Khôjee's when, one day, Jack Raymond and Lesley found themselves deftly man[oe]uvred by Grace Arbuthnot into the _tête-à-tête_ of a visit to the old lady; not in the least against their wills, for he was quite content with, and she vastly superior to, such palpable ruses; besides, she really wanted to see the originator of the _râm-rucki_, who was now decently established on the top of an offshoot of the city, which jutted out into that very pleasure-garden to which the old lady had come with her petition to the bracelet-brother.