Mrs. Ralston looked at her with wonder in her eyes.  “You seem to forget,” she said, “that Richard’s murderer is being tried, and that this man is very strongly suspected of being an abettor if not the actual instigator of the crime.”

Netta flicked the ash from her cigarette with a gesture of impatience.  “I only wish you would let me forget these unpleasant things,” she said.  “Why don’t you go and preach a sermon to the beautiful Stella Monck on the same text?  Ralph Dacre’s death was quite as much of a mystery.  And the kindly gossips are every bit as busy with Captain Monck’s reputation as with His Excellency’s.  But I suppose her devotion to that wretched little imbecile baby of hers renders her immune!”

She spoke with intentional malice, but she scarcely expected to strike home.  Mary was not, in her estimation, over-endowed with brains, and she never seemed to mind a barbed thrust or two.  But on this occasion Mrs. Ralston upset her calculations.

She arose in genuine wrath.  “Netta!” she said.  “I think you are the most heartless, callous woman I have ever met!”

And with that she went straight from the room, shutting the door firmly behind her.

“Good gracious!” commented Netta.  “Mary in a tantrum!  What an exciting spectacle!”

She stretched her slim body like a cat as she lay with the warm sunshine pouring over her, and presently she laughed.

“How funny!  How very funny!  Netta, my dear, they’ll be calling you wicked next.”

She pursed her lips over the adjective as if she rather enjoyed it, then stretched herself again luxuriously, with sensuous enjoyment.  She had riden with the Rajah in the early morning, and was pleasantly tired.

The sudden approach of Tessa, scampering along the verandah in the wake of Scooter, sent a quick frown to her face, which deepened swiftly as Scooter, dodging nimbly, ran into the room and went to earth behind a bamboo screen.

Tessa sprang in after him, but pulled up sharply at sight of her mother.  The frown upon Netta’s face was instantly reflected upon her own.  She stood expectant of rebuke.

“What a noisy child you are!” said Netta.  “Are you never quiet, I wonder?  And why did you let that horrid little beast come in here?  You know I detest him.”

“He isn’t horrid!” said Tessa, instantly on the defensive.  “And I couldn’t help him coming in.  I didn’t know you were here, but it isn’t your bungalow anyway, and Aunt Mary doesn’t mind him.”

“Oh, go away!” said Netta with irritation.  “You get more insufferable every day.  Take the little brute with you and shut him up—­or drown him!”

Tessa came forward with an insolent shrug.  There was more than a spice of defiance in her bearing.

“I don’t suppose I can catch him,” she said.  “But I’ll try.”

The chase of the elusive Scooter that followed would have been an affair of pure pleasure to the child, had it not been for the presence of her mother and the growing exasperation with which she regarded it.  It was all sheer fun to Scooter who wormed in and out of the furniture with mirth in his gleaming eyes, and darted past the window a dozen times without availing himself of that means of escape.