al; but that is
what you like, I believe."

"Oh! yes. I am quite in love with my black servants. I think they are
ever so much more picturesque and pleasant than my Richmond
acquaintances. They look on me as a white angel, which no one would
have done at home," with a smile at her quiet humour.

Eleanor's feelings by now are blunted to a certain extent, and she
frequently jests on the wholesome horror with which her English friends
must now regard "that reckless Mrs. Roche!"

Yet there are times when the thought of her sin rises like a dark
thundercloud over the sunshine of this life of love.

She is standing in the low verandah of her bamboo house, looking out
over a network of gorges, rifts, and ravines, precipices in peaks, with
villages crowning each crest. The houses are thatched with long grass,
which grows over the hills, while below in the valley the rice is
cultivated in terraces. The villages are stockaded with bamboo, and
the water runs through them in troughs of split bamboo.

"The people are certainly very dirty," says Eleanor, watching an old
woman with large amber earings, pounding rice, and talking to a dusky
man in a blue turban.

"Yes. They wear their clothes till they fall off, and never wash
except when it rains. That man below is a noted warrior in these
parts."

"How do you know?"

"You see the sword slung over his shoulder, with a bamboo hoop? Well,
the tiger's hoop is a sign of distinction."

"I wish the old woman would stop pounding. She makes my back ache to
look at her. She has been making linen on a loom all day, and must be
dreadfully tired."

"Did you notice the bell on it?"

"Yes. What was that for?"

"So that her lord and master may know when she stops working."

"There was a funeral to-day," says Eleanor; "the guns have been going
since morning in the jungle, to keep the spirits off. What a misery it
must be to believe in 'Nats.'* That old woman there gave me a charm. I
am always to wear it to keep the devils off. Do you think it will,
Carol?" with a low laugh. "Or am I theirs already?"

"Don't, Eleanor," he cries, drawing her to him. "I cannot bear to hear
you say such things."

She wriggles herself free, determined to tease him.

"But there are heaps of devils about," she declares, shaking her head;
"or else why do they put up arches especially to keep them
off--propitiate them, and prevent their entrance into the village?
They have little bamboo h