She had done Benares en tourist.
She had watched the worshippers thronging the Praying Steps at dawn from the deck of a boat rowed slowly up and down the holy river; had enticed the monkeys with gram from the niches in the Doorga Kond, the world-famed Monkey Temple; gazed fascinated and with reverence at the firing of the pyres about the dead bodies shrouded in white or red according to their sex upon the Burning Ghats; averted her eyes steadfastly from the bloated bodies in process of being torn to pieces by crows or vultures as they floated on the soft bosom of Mother Ganges to everlasting peace; and had passed restful hours in the wonderful ruins of the Buddhist temple some miles outside the city.
She had done all that others have done and will do, and still she waited, doing absolutely nothing and with no excuse for loitering in the hotel with its long broad verandah; learning much of the city's history from the charming manager who walks with a stick, and has the blue-green-brown shadow of the peat bog in his eyes.
"Shoo, you brute!" said one, of the girls on the verandah, and continued speaking when the crow had flown farther afield. "Well, the manager says we are not to go to the bazaar to-night on any account!"
"Why ever not?"
"Says there's a row or something brewing—something to do with the natives and their religion!"
The girl with the reddish-brown hair put a final polish to the nails, which damned her everlastingly, as she spoke condescendingly of one half of her forbears; while the other, a bonâ fide blonde as to hair, half opened the long sleepy brown eyes, which, combined with the shape of her silken-hosed leg from ankle to knee branded her even before she uttered a word.
"Don't believe it," the latter replied. "It's a do on the part of the guide to get more backsheesh; you simply can't trust these natives a yard. I'll tell you what, though," she sat up with an energy surprising in one of her kind, "let's ask Lady Hickle. She's such a pet, and there's nothing she doesn't know about the place, she's been here a whole month."
Followed a short spell of peace in which Leonie raised her hand to summon her ayah squatting on the dressing-room matting, and put an end to the incessant chattering.
But bolts do not wait upon the clapping of hands before they crash down upon your defenceless head from out the blue, and the one destined for her from all time hurled itself at her from out a wispy cloud of Eurasian gossip.