he never heard; while through the blazing hours of the day, and
the stifling hours of the night, like a black thread woven into a
tissue of gold, ran the ghastly fear which had been with her since the
day when a schoolgirl had taunted her, and to which she had given voice
near the poinsettia bush to Jan Cuxson.

She had _done_ Benares en tourist.

She had watched the worshippers thronging the Praying Steps at dawn
from the deck of a boat rowed slowly up and down the holy river; had
enticed the monkeys with gram from the niches in the Doorga Kond, the
world-famed Monkey Temple; gazed fascinated and with reverence at the
firing of the pyres about the dead bodies shrouded in white or red
according to their sex upon the Burning Ghats; averted her eyes
steadfastly from the bloated bodies in process of being torn to pieces
by crows or vultures as they floated on the soft bosom of Mother Ganges
to everlasting peace; and had passed restful hours in the wonderful
ruins of the Buddhist temple some miles outside the city.

She had done all that others have done and will do, and still she
waited, doing absolutely nothing and with no excuse for loitering in
the hotel with its long broad verandah; learning much of the city's
history from the charming manager who walks with a stick, and has the
blue-green-brown shadow of the peat bog in his eyes.

"Shoo, you brute!" said one, of the girls on the verandah, and
continued speaking when the crow had flown farther afield. "Well, the
manager says we are not to go to the bazaar to-night on any account!"

"Why ever not?"

"Says there's a row or something brewing--something to do with the
natives and their religion!"

The girl with the reddish-brown hair put a final polish to the nails,
which damned her everlastingly, as she spoke condescendingly of one
half of her forbears; while the other, a _bona fide_ blonde as to hair,
half opened the long sleepy brown eyes, which, combined with the shape
of her silken-hosed leg from ankle to knee branded her even before she
uttered a word.

"Don't believe it," the latter replied. "It's a do on the part of the
guide to get more backsheesh; you simply can't trust these natives a
yard. I'll tell you what, though," she sat up with an energy
surprising in one of her kind, "let's ask Lady Hickle. She's _such_ a
pet, and there's _nothing_ she doesn't know about the place, she's been
here a whole month."

Followed a short spell of peace in which L