“Of course not. It is an Indian name. Do you like Indians?”
“I have only known one West Indian lady.”
“West Indian! That is not Indian at all. I come from the land of the Rajahs. My grandmother was a Maharanee. She was the most beautiful woman in all India, and she wore chains of diamonds round her neck that flashed and sparkled like a thousand suns, and she lived in a marble palace that was called the Palace of Palms, where the floors glittered with gold, and soft music came like wind through the halls, and a great tall tower with a minaret and a spire rose up into the sky over the room where she slept, to tell all the world that there was the spot where the Lady of the Seven Stars was resting. And she had a thousand slaves who knelt and bowed themselves to the earth when she spoke to them, and her palanquin was all of ebony-wood inlaid with pearl, and it was hung with silver fringe, and the inside was satin, the colour of the opening roses; and she travelled on an elephant whose trappings were of gold. Ah, that is the beautiful land; where the sun is scorching hot on the fields, and shines bright and glorious, and throws golden darts through the chinks of the blinds. And yet there the ladies of high rank—like my grandmother and my mother and I, lie still and cool in their apartments, or step down soft-footed into their marble baths where no hot glare can reach them, only the sense that it is warm and bright outside. Oh, that is the place to live in, to be happy in. How could my mother leave it to come to a land like this!”
She had worked herself up as she sang the praises of her own country to a pitch of glowing excitement, which changed suddenly to an almost heartbroken wail with her last words. Mrs. Ellis looked up from the table reprovingly.
“You forget, Nouna, that India is a heathen country, and that your grandmother probably never had the chance of seeing so much as a single missionary, and seems to have been very ignorant of her higher duties.”
“There are no duties out there,” sighed Nouna, with a most plaintive look into the dream-distance from her black eyes; “at least for the high-caste women. You have only to live, and love, and grow old, and die, and nothing to learn but what you breathe in from the flowers and the sweet scents, and love-songs to please your lord the prince.”
Mrs. Ellis looked scandalised.
“Dear me, Nouna,” she bleated out nervously, “you really don’t know what you are talking about. You never talked like this before. I don’t know what Mr. Lauriston will think!”
Mr. Lauriston thought the look of passionate yearning in the young eyes inexpressibly fascinating, but he did not say so, merely murmuring something about the allowance to be made for a tropical temperament. And, Nouna being reduced by the interruption to a silent trance of regret, the conversation became an intermittent duologue between the other two until tea was brought in. The manner in which this was served displayed the same inconsistencies as the furniture of the room. Sundran, Nouna’s ayah, in her native dress, placed upon the table an ordinary black and battered tray, on which stood a chased silver-gilt tea-service of quaint design, cups, saucers, and plates of a common English pattern, and tiny silver-gilt tea-spoons with heart-shaped bowls and delicately enamelled dark-blue handles. A great watermelon lay among vine-leaves in a shallow silver dish.
Mrs. Ellis laid aside her writing materials and poured out the tea, but she could not forget the young girl’s alarming outburst.