sed the
pros and cons of accepting this person into the haven of their
Anglo-Indian bosom.

The elder ones kept out of the clatter, having suffered and fought in
similar crises in their own day as had their mothers, and their
mothers' mothers before them since the days before the mutiny; being
moreover resigned to the corrugated appearance of their faces, and the,
in consequence, perambulatory instincts of their lords.

"Her _undies_," said a woman who, with the excuse of borrowing a book,
had essayed to spy out the land of Leonie's cabin. "I saw her running
ribbons in them--the most _ex_-quisite crepe de Chine, hand embroidered
and trimmed with _real_ lace!"

"How _de trop_!" had answered a matron, whose household _linge_ and
personal _lingerie_ showed complete only in the sections of finger
napkins and undervests, as is the way of a careless, untidy woman's
linen stock.

"Well, that's easily understood," chimed in a third. "After all she
_is_ trade."

And the no's had carried it.

Wherefore, although in ignorance of the verdict, she did exactly what
every other woman did, and went where they went, she most certainly did
_not_ have what one would call a good time. She loved the Maidan and
golf at the Jodhpur Club, or Tollygunge, before breakfast; she
cordially loathed shopping and duty calls; grudged the hours lost out
of life in the daily afternoon siesta, and took part in dances, bridge,
dinners, and all the usual monotonous effort to kill time, with the air
of an indifferent, disgruntled statue.

Gossip was no joy to her, scandal she would not tolerate, and the women
commenced the task of ostracism by means of half-uttered phrases and
little invidious smiles; and most men voted her _odd_ owing to a
certain indescribable barrier which they invariably encountered when
they approached her over impulsively, and which really did _not_ tally
with her enticing, bizarre beauty.

Yes! they voted her odd, certainly, but in the secret places of their
hearts and bungalows some of them would ponder.

Had not the major sahib's bearer curled himself up on the mat beneath
the bed and gone to sleep, while the major sahib, after the ball, had
sat in his shirt-sleeves upon that bed until three in the morning; and
over and over again mentally slid up and down the room with supple,
slender Leonie in his arms, where, in the earlier hours of the night,
she had rested seemingly content for one half-second before he had let