“Oh, I don’t want to be bothered with women, my dear boy.  Take me out and show me the place and the shops and the Gymkhana—­what do you call it here?  Oh, the Amusement Club.  No, stop a minute.  Mrs. Dermot is your dear friend from Ranga Duar, isn’t she?  So she’s here.  And the other, the jungle girl, where is she?”

Frank flushed as he replied: 

“I suppose you mean Miss Benson?  She’s with Mrs. Dermot.”

“So you’re all staying at the same hotel.  How very nice for you!  But, my dear Frank, doesn’t it strike you that it’ll be rather dull for me staying by myself here?  You’ll have to change to this hotel.”

“I asked about rooms here; but they told me they’re full up now.”

“I’ll see if I can’t get round the manager and make him find a corner for you.  Well, now for this tea-party.  Yes; on second thoughts I’ll go.  I’d like to see the ladies who’ve been consoling you for my absence.”

“Oh, nonsense, Violet.  They haven’t.  They’re just friends, that’s all,” he said irritably.

“Of course, dear; I know.  Well, tell me what these ‘just friends’ are like.”

She certainly derived little idea of them from Wargrave’s lame attempt at description.  And when later she and he were shown into Mrs. Dermot’s sitting-room at tea-time Noreen and Muriel found his picture of her as a meek, long-suffering, neglected wife very unlike the radiant, condescending lady who patronised them from the start.  She showed a tendency to address most of her conversation to the girl, despite the latter’s evident disinclination to talk, or perhaps because of it; for the older woman seemed to take an impish delight in teasing her about her friendship with Wargrave and their relations as nurse and patient, although it was apparent that her malicious humour made the others uncomfortable.  She paraded her authority over Frank and treated him like a hen-pecked husband.  When finally she bore him away to escort her to the Amusement Club she left the two girls speechless behind her.  But not for the same reason.  Noreen was furious.

“What a hateful woman!” she exclaimed as soon as her visitor departed.  “And I pitied her as a poor neglected wife!  What do you think of her?”

Muriel only shook her head, as she sat looking despondent and thoroughly miserable.  Mrs. Norton’s malice affected her little, but her undoubted loveliness had made her despair.  How could an insignificant little person like herself, she thought, hope to win affection from any man whom this radiant beauty deigned to favour?  Frank could not help adoring so attractive a woman.  He must have loved her in Rohar, although he said that he had not.  Muriel felt that she could have resigned herself more easily to his keeping his word to Violet, if the latter had been less good-looking.

Mrs. Dermot broke in on her miserable thoughts.

“Come, dear, we’ll take the children for their walk and then go on later to the Amusement Club.”