Mr. Lucanaster acknowledged another of his nicknames by a lavish smile. 'There is faith as mustard in Raymond among our nigger friends,' he said, with the eccentricity of accent and idiom which, following him into every language he knew, made his nationality an insoluble problem. He glanced back as he spoke towards a cluster of native gentlemen who, following a lead as ever, were also making their way from the stand. The similarity of their oval yellow faces, their thin curves of moustache trained to a fine sweep above the full betel-stained lips, proclaimed them of the same family; but Lesley singled out the Rightful Heir by his cloth-of-gold coatee, and by something which, rather to her own surprise, thrilled her unexpectedly--a green gleam of sovereignty on the small supple hand raised in a _salaam_ of servitude as its owner passed the Lieutenant-Governor and his party. 'I'm always glad,' continued Nevill Lloyd virtuously, when Lucre and his crew are hit! They get betting with the Nawâbs and offering 'em drinks. Shocking bad form--by the way, Miss Drummond, come to our tent and have a peach-brandy!' Lesley, with another trait of the modern girl--her toleration of the male sex up to the age of twenty-five--laughed good-humouredly. 'It isn't bad form with a lady, apparently, for that's the fifth peach-brandy I've been offered in half an hour!' 'Well! aren't there five tents? And you haven't been to ours,' argued the lad quite gravely. 'Do come! It needn't be a peach-brandy, you know. Have tea, or a chocolate caramel, just to show there isn't any ill-feeling.' She smiled in sisterly fashion at his kindly, clean-looking young face, and--Jerry having gone with his father--passed with it into that marvellous golden glory of Indian sunshine which still struck her Western eyes as the most noticeable factor in her Eastern environment. The rest, barring the native costumes, was hopelessly Western, she told herself, as she stood listening to the scraps of talk around, while Nevill Lloyd struggled for her cup of tea. Polo talk, polite talk, political talk; then something she could not classify as two natives drifted by with an air of aloofness. As they did so a plaintive woman's voice rose close to her. 'I shall send baby home, as we've been transferred to Cawnpore.' 'Isn't she rather young?' said some one in answer. 'Oh! it isn't that,' replied the first voice, 'I mean that I couldn't take a child to Cawnpore. I should always be thinking of the well!' _Always thinking of the well!_ The words brought home to Lesley Drummond in an instant--a never-to-be-forgotten instant--that _something_ which so often chills the golden glory of the Eastern sunshine, that vision of the sentinel of memory which, for both races, bars the door of reconciliation that might otherwise stand open for comradeship. She had read books on that past tragedy, she had told herself that it _was_ past, that it should be forgotten; and now--