"As sure as eggs is eggs, it's Runkle!"
She rushed helter-skelter to the door, while Rosamond sat still, clasping her ringed finger.
A minute later Aspasia burst into the room again. She was laughing violently in reaction, and brought a breath as of wet woods and winter winds into the warm room.
"It's all right," she gasped. "It isn't Runkle, aunt, it's only——" with a fresh irrepressible gust, "it's only the 'native spring,' you know, the black man—the secretary who's writing up Runkle's monument!"
She leaned against the bed-post, puffing and fanning herself with her handkerchief.
"What a turn he's given me—poor thing! I'm glad we've got Jani for him. He looked so forlorn, standing in the hall, staring about him with great sad eyes, like something pitchforked into a different world."
* * * * *
Jani carried a lamp into the small bare chamber allotted to Muhammed Saif-u-din, and set it on the table at which he was seated.
She turned up the wick, and was straightening herself from her task when her glance fell upon the man's hands and became riveted there. Even in their attitude of repose, folded one over the other in the oriental fashion, these dusky hands had a singular suggestion of strength and energy about them. They were larger, too, than might have been expected in a babu; but then was he not of the virile northern breed?
After a while, slowly, the woman's gaze travelled up to the broad breast, where it rested once more. Then, upon a sudden impulse, she tilted the green shade so as to throw the full light upon the bearded countenance. The secretary smiled and raised his eyes to look at her in return; but her action had cast her face into profound shadow.