e without Carol is hideous, impossible. Her
usual spirits flag.

"Why are you so dull and down, darling?"

"You make me so!"

"It seems, Eleanor, you can never take a joke."

All the glamour of her present happiness has faded under the saddening
influence of Carol's "joke!" But she will not own it is that which
distresses her.

"I do not see an animal I know and care for bitten to death every day,
and that poor little dog was so attached to me. I wish I had given him
the extra biscuit he begged for this morning. I told him he was
greedy, and hid it away."

She goes sadly into the house and dresses for dinner in a dainty robe
of white muslin cut low at the neck, for Quinton's benefit.

The sudden necessity for looking beautiful, and making herself pleasant
and fascinating, comes over her like a nightmare. Her throat is
parched. Her temples burn.

The gown is soft and clinging, the effect fairylike and picturesque.
Quinton never sees her in this simple garb without an exclamation of
approval.

She creeps behind him in the verandah, twining her bare arms round his
neck.

He looks at her admiringly, as he would at a picture which gladdens the
eye for a moment.

"How late it is," she whispers, kneeling beside him. "Cook is frantic,
for all our dinner is spoiled, we were out a long while."

Quamina, who only talks a smattering of English, rushes into the
verandah, wringing her hands. Her black lips tremble, her eyes start
from her head.

"Oh! Sahib, Sahib!" she cries, "the big black devil that tracks the
Sahib, he rode up the hill, _there_!" pointing with outstretched
fingers.

Quinton starts to his feet.

"Where?" he asks, looking out but seeing nothing. "What do you mean?"

But Quamina continues to shake and cry, moaning "The devil, he has come
for the Sahib!"

CHAPTER XX.

LIFE IS THORNY, AND YOUTH IS VAIN.

When Quamina can be quieted and her fears calmed, the truth is
gradually drawn from her. She has seen a man in a black mask prowling
on his hands and knees in the bushes round the house. She leant out of
her window and screamed, whereupon he sprang on to a horse, and
galloped up the hill like a madman.

Quamina cannot be persuaded it is not the devil himself haunting their
domain, and is petrified with terror for the rest of the evening.

"I should feel inclined to put the masked man down to Quamina's vivid
imagination," declares Eleanor, "if you had not personally encoun