'Is that his name? What a name! And oh! what a person!' cried Lucy. She ran up the steps and brought her charming little person, bewitchingly dressed in a long Indian cashmere robe, drawn in at the waist with a golden girdle, into full view. 'I was with Grace when he came in,' she said. 'I have been arranging the table, and I was arranging her. He looked at me and I withered up to nothing. But as Grace seemed to take to him and his talk like a duck to water, I just ran away and left them alone. Darling,' turning to Grace, 'what, in the name of heaven, were you talking about? He has been with you more than half an hour.'
Then the others came in, all of them looking curious. But Grace lay back with a smile on her lips, and a strange, inscrutable expression in her eyes.
'It was very good of you,' said Tom gently. 'But you must not let these people tire you. I wonder who admitted Vishnugupta.'
'Please let him come again if he likes,' said Grace. 'He does not tire me in the least. I think, do you know, he has done me good.' She smiled more naturally than Tom had seen her smile since the day when he found her in the jungle.
'Oh! if he does you good, he shall come every day, and I will thank and bless him to the end of my life,' said Tom gaily. 'But now, may we draw you up to the table? We are to have a merry evening, you know, Grace.' His voice shook a little, and, in spite of the brave effort to be cheerful, the muscles of his face contracted painfully. He could not help seeing how fragile she was.
But she took up his words at once. 'Yes, yes,' she said; 'a merry evening. Let us fancy ourselves in England, on the banks of the Thames. Thank you,' as they drew in her couch. 'I am sorry to be so troublesome. Kit, will you sit near me, and Aglaia next? No, no, Rajah Sahib; you must take the place of honour. So! We can all see you now! Has he really changed so much, Mrs. Lyster?'
'Changed! He hasn't changed at all,' cried the enthusiastic little Irishwoman. 'It's I that was the idiot not to know him. But I'll never be so silly again. I promise you that.'
'I'm not quite so sure that it was your fault, Mrs. Lyster,' said Tom aside. Mrs. Durant and Lucy were exchanging a little war of words about some disputed point of the arrangements of the evening, and Grace was talking merrily to Kit and Aglaia.
'Do you believe,' he asked abruptly, 'in the possibility of people living in two individualities?'
She paused for a moment, and then looked meditatively at Grace. 'Until just lately,' she said, 'I should have called the question an absurdity. But——'