"No one," she replied, indifferently; "I thought he was Captain Dering; their uniforms--" she broke off to add, with more animation, "I do like the gold and silver lace. Though of course the jewels, like the rajahs wore, look best."
He interrupted her in Italian, giving a quick gesture of dissent. "Say not so, cara mia, they would look ill on--on Englishmen. And listen, child! You should not speak to strangers; and I would rather you did not speak to such natives at all. They--cannot understand--quite--for they look on women differently from what we do."
Laila's eyes narrowed sullenly. "Very well, guardian," she said resignedly, "only I suppose they must know what their women are really like--and--perhaps the native ladies prefer it."
The old man looked at her, startled, but said nothing.
When he had gone to find Akbar Khân and the carriage, Vincent Dering, seeing her alone, came up--so, at least, he told himself--out of sheer politeness, to ask if she wanted anything. Yet something in her face sent him beyond mere courtesy at once; something almost childishly apparent.
"I'm afraid you haven't been enjoying yourself," he said kindly. "Why not? I thought it rather pleasant."
"Very pleasant!" she assented wearily. "Only my guardian has been telling me not to do things; and I don't know why, but I always want to do them at once--don't you?"
He could not actually deny the fact. "Sometimes. One has to pretend--"
She raised her eyes to his blindingly; he caught a glimpse in them of the lawless approval Roshan Khân had seen, yet of something else--a lawless disdain. "Why must one?" she asked. "I never mean to, never! If I want to do a thing I'll do it. I don't mean wicked things, of course--" she returned here to demure, almost plaintive piety--"I don't want to do them, and nothing can be wrong when it seems right to you, and it is real--ever so real, and you give yourself to it, every bit of you, without thinking, and--and--ask nothing--nothing at all--"
Her vehemence, her passionate assertion, roused a quick response in him. "Would you do that?" he asked, his voice vibrating. "Would you--really?"