'She spoke to me with kindness, Sahib.'
'They have told her what a hero you are, Hoosanee. Well! get my bath ready, and give me my things! No one from outside will come in yet. I will meet the ladies in the summer-house.'
All of them but Grace were there—Lucy, looking a little pale after the excitement of the night before, and Mrs. Durant, with Kit pressed close by her side, and Mrs. Lyster, who wore her Indian dress with a strange shyness, and Aglaia, all smiles and gladness, and little Dick and his mother.
When they saw the rajah, who was dressed as an Indian of rank, coming along the path that led to their retreat, they rose from the table and went out to meet him. Aglaia and little Dick were first. They ran into his arms, and he caught them both up joyfully, glad, perhaps, to hide his slight embarrassment in the warmth of the children's boisterous welcome. 'Oh! how lovely everything is!' said Aglaia rapturously. 'You won't go away again, Daddy Tom?'
'Not till I take you back to England with me, Aglaia.' And then he turned to the other ladies, a boyish flush on his face, which exercise and exposure to the sun had bronzed almost to the native hue.
'It is too bad of you to disturb yourselves,' he said. 'I should not have come so early, only I thought that, as you were taking breakfast out-of-doors, you would give me a corner at the table.'
'Of course we will,' cried Lucy. 'It's such a rapture to see any one. Mrs. Lyster was just wishing——'
'Never mind what I wished. Let me speak for myself, Lucy,' said Mrs. Lyster, advancing and looking at the rajah shyly. 'Mr. Gregory——'
Tom smiled. 'So you have found me out at last, my dear old friend,' he said, shaking her cordially by the hand. 'I am cleverer than you. Dark as it was the other night, I found you out at once——
'And yet you said nothing?'