ble
awe. He did not take much notice of her. It seemed to Stella that he had
retired very deeply into his shell of reserve during those days. Even
with herself he was reticent, monosyllabic, obviously absorbed in
matters of which she had no knowledge.

But for her small worshipper she would have been both lonely and
anxious. For he was often absent, sometimes for hours at a stretch
wholly without warning, giving no explanation upon his return. She
asked no questions. She schooled herself to patience. She tried to be
content with the close holding of his arms when they were together and
the certainty that all the desire of his heart was for her alone. But
she could not wholly, drive away the conviction that at the very gates
of her paradise the sword she dreaded had been turned against her. They
were back in the desert again, and the way to the tree of life was
barred.

Perhaps it was natural that she should turn to Tessa for consolation and
distraction. The child was original in all her ways. Her ideas of death
were wholly devoid of tragedy, and she was too accustomed to her
father's absence to feel any actual sense of loss.

"Do you think Daddy likes Heaven?" she said to Stella one day. "I hope
Mother will be quick and go there too. It would be better for her than
staying behind with the Rajah. I always call him 'the slithy tove.' He
is so narrow and wriggly. He wanted me to kiss him once, but I wouldn't.
He looked so--so mischievous." Tessa tossed her golden-brown head.
"Besides, I only kiss white men."

"Hear, hear!" said Tommy, who was cleaning his pipe on the verandah.
"You stick to that, my child!"

"Mother said I was very silly," said Tessa. "She was quite cross. But
the Rajah only laughed in that nasty, slippy way he has and took her
cigarette away and smoked it himself. I hated him for that," ended Tessa
with a little gleam of the tiger-cat in her blue eyes. "It--it was a
liberty."

Tommy's guffaw sounded from the verandah. It went into a greeting of
Monck who came up unexpectedly at the moment and sat down on a
wicker-chair to examine a handful of papers. Stella, working within the
room, looked up swiftly at his coming, but if he had so much as glanced
in her direction he was fully engrossed with the matter in hand ere she
had time to observe it. He had been out since early morning and she had
not seen him for several hours.

Tessa, who possessed at times an almost uncanny shrewdness, left her and
we