colour
which swept her face from chin to brow.

In the middle of the night, when suddenly and unaccountably aroused
from a restless doze, she spoke sharply as her eyes rested on a white
figure prone upon the floor in the reflected light of the moon.

"_Bearer_!"

Her voice was indignant, and the man with one movement rose to his feet
and salaamed.

"What _do_ you mean by sleeping in my room?"

Dear heaven, how he loved her as she sat like an image of wrath behind
the mosquito net with the sheet pulled up to her neck.

"There are three doors to the mem-sahib's bedroom, and as the blinds
fit badly, except for the presence of her servant, there is nothing to
prevent a pariah dog, a jackal, or a thief from entering."

"Please leave my room and sleep somewhere else. I do not like it, and
I am quite safe."

Leonie, feeling acutely the want of dignity in her bunched-up attitude,
did not know what to say when the man refused suavely, but point-blank,
to leave her.

"I regret that I cannot obey, as the mem-sahib is in my care, and I am
responsible for her safety; but until the day breaks I will keep watch
at the foot of the bed where the mem-sahib's eyes cannot rest upon her
servant!"

Oh! Leonie! Leonie! With that strange, angry, and unaccounted-for
mark still upon your shoulder, if only you knew what a fuss you were
making over nothing.

But she said thank you quite nicely when _chotar hazri_ was placed
beside her bed in the early morning, to the refreshing sound of water
being heaved into the tin bath in the dressing-room.

CHAPTER XLIV

"If thou faintest in the day of adversity,
thy strength is small."--_The Bible_.

Jan Cuxson was walking round and round the ruined chamber, pausing at
the doors as he passed them to look out at the seemingly never-ending
jungle; he would have reminded any onlooker of some caged beast as he
went monotonously round and round.

He was rather a desperate sight, too, with harassed eyes in a gaunt
face, and his open shirt exposing a somewhat emaciated chest; not that
he had been starved, far from it; but eat you ever so heartily, fill
your interior with all the fatty substances, real or artificial, in the
world, worry will push in your cheek and temple, draw canals of woe
from your nose to your mouth, and force your cheek-bone, nose, and ribs
into high relief.

Of course he ought to have had a many days' growth of beard all over
the face; but, owing to one pa