She breaks off into bitter sobbing and sinks on the step.
Eleanor stands like one paralysed listening to the quarrel, while Tombo hides behind her skirts, clinging to her fearfully.
Her face flushes with shame for Elizabeth, and pity for this stricken woman. Her eyes flash scorn on Mrs. Kachin, as she turns and raises the stranger from her attitude of humility and degradation.
"Your daughter's virtue and pride are things to be despised, accursed," she says, "when bound in such an armour of harshness and cruelty."
The weeping woman lifts her head, and her eyes meet Eleanor's.
The two start involuntarily. The scene of a railway carriage rushes suddenly before their vision, the fragments of a torn photograph, the name on the label of Eleanor's dressing bag.
"Mrs. Roche!" gasps the stranger.
That word here. It stuns, petrifies her! The very sound of it is as a blow.
A flock of four or five hornbills fly above their heads, making their noises like an express train through the air. As they fade from sight Eleanor fancies the train has stopped at the little platform of Copthorne.
The shrill cry of the jungle fowl, crowing like bantams on the old farmland at home, seem to repeat the word "Roche, Roche!"