of her half-caste lover, Hugh Carden
Ali."

And the woman who had limped back to the street, sniggered behind her
veil as she watched the man tear the letter into shreds, while he sat
and thought out an answer to this second problem.

"It's a damnable lie. My Damaris and good old Carden! I expect
they've met, but who------" He sniffed at his hands suddenly. "Pah!
Now, where have I smelt that scent before?--filth!" He sat with his
hands to his nose, then frowned as, under the suggestion of the
perfume, the picture of a lovely woman clad in silks and satins and
wearing rich jewels rose before him.

"My God!" he said slowly, as the full significance of it all dawned
slowly upon him. "Of course! She--she invited me to--to visit
her--and I refused. By all that's clean and decent, if I don't make
her pay for this! And it's Carden, too, who can tell me the best way
to set about it. The harlot! I wonder if I shall have to wait until
evening for a train." He clenched his hands until the knuckles showed
white, as he unseeingly watched a woman limp down the street. "I'll
make her sorry she was ever born."

He need not have worried on that point. Fate was dogging those
unsteady feet back to the hovel.

The spreading of a prairie fire is slow compared to the speed with
which news runs through the bazaar. The servants in the big house in
the big garden went sullenly about their various tasks of tidying and
clearing up the courtesan's home, whilst little knots of people,
composed principally of women, stood about in the vicinity of the gate.

It was the first time the tyrannical woman had been absent upon a long
journey, and the relatives and friends even unto a most distant
generation of her servants had taken advantage of it to visit the house
and examine its, to them, surpassing luxury.

The Ethiopian, with his mind fixed only upon the bank, had taken but
little interest in the house itself, and had visited it but rarely, and
then only for the sake of appearances; so that the visitors had become
more and more brazen, as the days passed, fingering the satins, sitting
upon the cushions, feasting on the floor.

Bes, the monstrous keeper of the lions, had become prime favourite with
the men, and the neighbourhood had resounded with the roars of the
brutes at night as they fought for their food.

Also was there something savage in the way the women visitors had
fingered and touched everything, and had visited e