It was the faintest allusion to a bond between them which both silently recognized, and Lois turned away to hide the signal of happiness which had risen to her cheeks.
"No one knows," she answered. "The bodies were never found. It was part of Behar Singh's cruelty to hide the real fate of his victims. For a long time people used to hope and hope that in some dungeon or prison they would find their friends, but they never did. One can only pray that the end was a mercifully quick one."
"And Behar Singh died in the jungle?"
"So the natives said. No one really knows," she replied.
"I wish he hadn't," Stafford said, his good-natured face darkening.
"It seems unfair that he should have caused our people to suffer so
much and we have never had the chance to pay back. Whatever made the
Government give his son the power, goodness only knows."
"The present Rajah was a baby then," she said in a tone of gentle remonstrance. "It would have been hard to have punished him for the sins of his father."
Nothing appeals to a man more than a woman's undiplomatic tenderness for the whole world. Stafford looked down at Lois with a smile.
"You dear, good-hearted little girl!" he said. "And yet, blood is blood, you know. Somehow, one can't get over it. In spite of his good looks, it always seems to me as though I could see his father's treachery in Nehal Singh's eyes. It made me sick to think that I was enjoying his hospitality—it makes me feel worse that we have to accept the club-house at his hands. Travers behaved pretty badly, according to my ideas."
"It was mostly Miss Cary's doing," Lois objected. She liked Travers, and was inclined to take up the cudgels on his behalf.
Stafford's eyes twinkled. On his side he had the rooted and not unfounded masculine notion that all women are jealous of one another.