But towards the man her feelings were frankly anger and contempt.  He had rudely awakened her from a beautiful dream; for that she could never forgive him.  Her idol was shattered, never again to be made whole, so she vowed in the bitterness of her desolate soul.  It was not friendship that she had felt for him—­she realised that now.  It was love.  She had given him her whole heart in a girl’s first, pure, ideal love.  And he had despised the gift and trampled it in the mire of unholy passion.  She knew that it was the love of her life.  Never could any man be to her what he had been.

But what did it matter to Dermot? she thought bitterly.  She had passed out of his life.  She had never been anything in it.  He had been amused for an idle moment by her simplicity, tool that she was.  What he had done, had risked for her, he would have done and risked for any other woman.  Why did he not write to her after his departure as he might have done?  She almost hoped that he would, so that she could answer him and pour out on him, if only on paper, the scorn and disgust that filled her.  But no; she would not do that.  The more dignified course would be to ignore his letter altogether.  If only she could hurt him she felt that she would accept any other man’s offer of marriage.  But even then he wouldn’t care.  He had always stood aside in Darjeeling and let others strive for her favour.  And she was put to the test, for first Charlesworth and then Melville had proposed to her.

Though Noreen’s heart was frozen towards her quondam friend, Ida never perceived the fact.  For the elder woman was so thoroughly satisfied with herself that it never occurred to her that any one whom she honoured with her liking could do aught but be devoted to her in return.  And against the granite of her self-sufficiency the iron of the girl’s proud anger broke until at length, baffled by the other’s conceit, Noreen drifted back into the semblance of her former friendliness.  And Ida never remarked any difference.

A hundred miles away Dermot roamed the hills and forest again.  The interdict of the Rains was lifted, and the game was afoot once more.

The portents of the coming storm were intensified.  Much that the Divisional Commander, General Heyland, had revealed to him in their confidential interviews at Darjeeling was being corroborated by happenings in other parts of the Peninsula, in Afghanistan, in China, and elsewhere.  Signs were not wanting on the border that Dermot had to guard.  Messengers crossing and re-crossing the Bhutan frontier were increasing in numbers and frequency; and he had at length succeeded in tracking some of them to a destination that first gave him a clue to the seat and identity of the organisers of the conspiracy in Bengal.