She was no longer acutely ill, but a low fever hung about her, a species of physical inertia against which she had no strength to struggle.  And often she wondered to herself with a dreary amazement, why she still lived, why she had survived the horrors of that flight through the mountains, why she had been thus, as it were, cast up upon a desert rock when all that had made life good in her eyes had been ruthlessly swept away.  At such times there would come upon her a loneliness almost unthinkable, a shrinking more terrible than the fear of death, and the future would loom before her black as night, a blank and awful desert which she felt she could never dare to travel.

Sometimes in her dreams there would come to her other visions—­visions of the gay world that throbbed so close to her, the world she had entered with her father so short a time before.  She would hear again the hubbub of laughing voices, the music, the tramp of dancing feet.  And she would start from her sleep to find only a great emptiness, a listening silence, an unspeakable desolation.

If she ever thought of Nick in those days, it was as a phantom that belonged to the nightmare that lay behind her.  He had no part in her present, and the future she could not bring herself to contemplate.  No one even mentioned his name to her till one day Lady Bassett entered her room before starting for a garden-party at Vice-Regal Lodge, a faint flush on her cheeks, and her blue eyes brighter than usual.

“I have just received a note from Captain Ratcliffe, dear Muriel,” she said.  “I have already mentioned to him that you are too unwell to think of receiving any one at present, but he announces his intention of paying you a visit notwithstanding.  Perhaps you would like to write him a note yourself, and corroborate what I have said.”

“Captain Ratcliffe!” Muriel echoed blankly, as though the name conveyed nothing to her; and then with a great start as the blood rushed to her white cheeks, “Oh, you mean Nick.  I—­I had almost forgotten his other name.  Does he want to see me?  Is he in Simla still?”

She turned her hot face away with a touch of petulance from the peculiar look with which Lady Bassett was regarding her.  What did she mean by looking at her so, she wondered irritably?

There followed a pause, and Lady Bassett began to fasten her many-buttoned gloves.

“Of course, dear,” she said gently, at length, “there is not the smallest necessity for you to see him.  Indeed, if my advice were asked, I should recommend you not to do so; for after such a terrible experience as yours, one cannot be too circumspect.  It is so perilously easy for rumours to get about.  I will readily transmit a message for you if you desire it, though I think on the whole it would be more satisfactory if you were to write him a line yourself to say that you cannot receive him.”

“Why?” demanded Muriel, with sudden unexpected energy.  She turned back again, and looked at Lady Bassett with a quick gleam that was almost a challenge in her eyes.  “Why should I not see him?  After all, I suppose I ought to thank him.  Besides—­besides—­why should I not?”