about them while they knew nothing whatsoever
about her. Her limited English could be used as a means of baffling
them. She smiled, and fell into Hindustani when she was pressed.

Jane Cupp heard both questions and answers. Ameerah professed to know
nothing but such things as the whole village knew. Towards the end of
the discussion, however, in a mixture of broken English and Hindustani,
she conveyed that she had believed that the girl would drown herself.
Asked why, she shook her head, then said that she had seen her by the
Mem Sahib's lake at the end of the trees. She had asked if the water was
deep enough, near the bridge, to drown. Ameerah had answered that she
did not know.

There was a general exclamation. They all knew it was deep there. The
women shuddered as they remembered how deep they had been told it was at
that particular spot. It was said that there was no bottom to it.
Everybody rather revelled in the gruesomeness of the idea of a
bottomless piece of water. Someone remembered that there was a story
about it. As much as ninety years ago two young labourers on the place
had quarrelled about a young woman. One day, in the heat of jealous rage
one had seized the other and literally thrown him into the pond. He had
never been found. No drags could reach his body. He had sunk into the
blackness for ever.

Ameerah sat at the table with downcast eyes. She had a habit of sitting
silent with dropped eyes, which Jane could not bear. As she drank her
tea she watched her in spite of herself.

After a few minutes had passed, her appetite for bread and butter
deserted her. She got up and left the hall, looking pale.

The mental phases through which she went during the afternoon ended in
her determination to go down the avenue and to the water's side this
evening. It could be done while her ladyship and her guests were at
dinner. This evening the Vicar and his wife and daughter were dining at
the Manor.

Jane took in emotionally all the mysterious silence and dimness of the
long tree-pillared aisle, and felt a tremor as she walked down it,
trying to hold herself in hand by practical reflections half whispered.

"I'm just going to have a look, to make sure," she said, "silly or not.
I've got upset through not being able to help watching that woman, and
the way to steady my nerves is to make sure I'm just giving in to
foolishness."

She walked as fast as she could towards the water. She could see its
gleam in