And followed screams of pure delight as Leonie flung back her hand, in which gleamed the diamond hilted dagger, just as a terrific peal of thunder crashed upon the searing flash of lightning, which flamed from the dense clouds as they swept over and blotted out the moon.

CHAPTER XL

  “Could I come near your beauty with my nails,
  I’d set my ten commandments in your face!”—­Shakespeare.

Leonie was sitting on the edge of her bed waiting for the gharri to take her to the station; she had lunched and breakfasted in her bedroom, in fact she had lived there since her interview with the manager, which had been indescribably unpleasant for him, in that it had been so distressing to the gentle girl as she had sat and nodded her head and looked at him out of agonised, forgiving eyes.

The hotel en masse, at least the feminine portion of it, had had a prior interview with the manager which had been superlatively unpleasant for him.

Coerced by a force which was closely allied to the brute; almost shouted down when he essayed to argue in favour of the hounded girl; threatened by the immediate transfer of the entire visiting list to the books of a rival hotel, he had ultimately owned to defeat; and Leonie sat on the edge of her bed, staring vacantly into the denuded dressing-room, while the native staff, yea! even unto him who had done her no service, buzzed round in the vicinity of her door.

Strange things had happened, things undefined, and therefore not capable of bearing the light of honest dissection or discussion.

What had happened during the night of rioting—­so-called—­in the city?  What had been the meaning of those white-robed figures which had fluttered near her door?  And oh! why had her faithful ayah been found on the edge of the river the morning after, stabbed through the heart?

As if anyone in India with any sense at all would make inquiries about the last event.

All that and a lot more! and quite enough to slam the gates of heaven or the hotel upon any lovely woman on her own!

Yes! but—­did all that really do the actual slamming?

Not a bit of it!

It was the most convenient excuse the womenfolk could find to hang upon the peg of jealousy which had been knocked into the wall of feminine conceit and bad intent, by the hammer of Leonie’s beauty, and irritating indifference to both men and women, especially the former.

Let any woman lure to her side some other woman’s own particular bit of masculine property; poach successfully upon her understocked male preserves; and figuratively, maybe verbally, most assuredly positively if she live east of Blackfriars, the claws of jealousy will be sharpened upon her; but—­ignore the bit of masculine property, pass it by on the other side, consider it as belonging to somebody else, leave the preserves severely alone, and vials of execration, anathema, and denunciation, which are all synonyms for the same thing, will be poured upon her because of her lack of the appreciative faculty.