"I shall save myself, have no fear!" she answered, with a bitter, terrible laugh.
From the couch Christine Stafford's voice rose peacefully:
"Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!"
Another voice answered, "Amen!" There was the report of a revolver and a sudden, startling stillness. It lasted only a breathing space. Furious shoulders hurled themselves against the frail, weakly barred door. It cracked, bulged inward, with a bursting, tearing sound, yielded. The moonlight flooded into the little room, throwing up into bold relief the three upright figures and the little heap that knelt motionless by the couch.
The crowd of savage faces hesitated, faltering an instant before the sahibs who yesterday had been their lords and masters. Then the sahibs fired. It was all that was needed. The room filled. There was one stifled groan—no more than that. No cry for mercy, no whining.
Little by little the room emptied again. The cries and bloodthirsty screams of triumphant vengeance died slowly in the distance, the grey moonlight resumed its peaceful sovereignty. Only here and there were dark stains its silver could not wash away.
CHAPTER II
THE DANCING IS RESUMED.
"Oh, I love India—adore it, simply!" Mrs. Cary exclaimed, in the tone of a person who, usually self-controlled, finds himself overwhelmed by the force of his own enthusiasm. "There is something so mystic, so enthralling about it, don't you think? I always feel as though I were wandering through a chapter of the Arabian Nights full of gorgeous princes, wicked robbers, genii, or whatever you call them. Isn't it so with you, Mrs. Carmichael?"
Her hostess, a thin, alert little woman with a bony, weather-beaten face, cast an anxious glance at the rest of her guests scattered about the garden.