The old woman’s lips curled in a sneer.
“And would you be as certain if she were not slender as the crescent moon and golden headed as—”
“Be silent, Bibi. Has old age robbed you of the dignity that belongs to royal blood? There is to be no more talk of this matter, either here or in any other part of Kotpura State.” His cold glance swept the room. “Do you understand this—all of you? I will have no fresh scandals woven around Bhindi Palace. Gossip will be punished without mercy.”
A murmur of submissive assent came from the group of servants, but the old rani’s face still wore that expression of angry contempt.
“And now, Miss Hantley, I can only offer you my deepest apologies and ask you to return to the prince’s bedside,” Chawand Rao continued quietly, and he motioned to a servant to draw aside the curtain. “You may not be able to forget the insults offered to you this morning, but I hope you will forgive them.”
“I shall think no more of them, Your Highness.” Stella walked toward the doorway, her curly golden head held high. But as she passed into the corridor she heard the sound of reedy laughter and knew, although Chawand Rao did not, that with her knowledge of that previous episode of five years ago the old rani still held a trump card in her clawlike hand.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Before the close of the long day, Stella’s unceasing devotion of the little prince met with its reward. There were signs, clearer every hour, that Prithviraj was making a successful fight for his life; but so determined was she to avoid raising false hopes in his father’s heart, that she kept her thoughts to herself. By the time evening fell, however, the crisis was definitely over. The child’s ravaged look was replaced by one of mere exhaustion, and after taking some nourishing soup with a real appetite, he slipped off into a natural sleep, her hand held limply in his small brown fingers.
As soon as she could do so without the risk of awakening him, she freed herself and stretched her weary body exultantly. She longed now to spread the good news, and when Armand appeared with the usual anxious question on his lips—and the usual offer to take her place in the sickroom while she had dinner—she could have flung her arms about his neck for sheer lightness of heart.
“Armand, isn’t it marvelous? He’s going to get well. The battle is over.” Her dark-lashed blue eyes shone like stars in the chalky pallor of her face. “I feel now that this ghastly time has been worthwhile, after all.”
“It’s been more than worthwhile, Stella, as far as I am concerned.” There was a worshipping expression on the young Frenchman’s face. “I’ve read about women like you, but I never believed I should meet one. Even if there’s no hope for me, it’s been an experience I shall never forget.” And then, moving swiftly toward her, he took both her hands. “Chérie, is there any hope for me? I know I’m only an obscure teacher of French, in a remote Indian state, but I have what I think you call expectations, and—”
“Armand, how can you be so foolish?” She wrenched her hands away impatiently.
“Is it folly to speak of love to the woman one adores?”
“But what a moment to choose!”
“Do you mean, Stella, that if I come to you some other time, you may give me a kinder answer?” There was an almost boyish eagerness in his voice, and for a second she was moved to pity.
“I could never love you, Armand, and without love marriage would be out of the question for me.”
His face shadowed. “I suppose you think you’re in love with Fendish, but believe me mignon, I could make you far happier than that sulky giant could.”
“At the moment I’ve no intention of marrying anyone at all.” She managed to keep her voice steady. “And now, Armand, I’d be grateful if you’d fetch His Highness. I want him to hear the good news at once.”
“Very well, but, Stella, I beg of you to think over what I have said. I know you regard me as a flippant, irresponsible young idiot, but there’s more to me than that, darling, and—” his voice shook a little “—I don’t believe anyone will ever love you more.”
“I’m sorry, Armand,” she began helplessly.
He shook his head. “I don’t want your pity, Stella. I want something far bigger than that—and I’m going all out for it.” And before she could answer him, he was gone. A few minutes later she heard Chawand Rao’s light step in the corridor and met him smilingly at the threshold. “Your Highness has heard the good news?”
“Yes, Miss Hantley, and my gratitude to you is so great I cannot find words to express it.” His tone was warm, but behind it there was unmistakable weariness, and for the first time she realized how desperately he had been suffering during these last anxious days. He walked across and looked at the sleeping boy, then came back to her. “I am afraid things have been made terribly difficult for you by my aunt,” he said, “but maybe you will find it possible to forgive the fanaticism of an old woman—perhaps, indeed, more easily than you will forgive my despicable conduct in—in practically kidnapping you.”
“That’s over and done with.” Automatically she gave him the bright professional smile she had learned to cultivate during the days of her training. “I can’t pretend that I won’t be glad to get back to my own people, but—”
“You will have a poor report to take back to them of the Bhindi folk.” He, too, smiled, but with a hint of melancholy.
She shook her head. “Nurses don’t gossip about their patients—or their patients’ relatives,” she declared briskly.
He smiled again. “Then nurses must be more than human. But, Miss Hantley, you spoke just now of going back to your people. I want you to believe that from this day on you will be looked upon as a friend by all my subjects, and that in every corner of the state your praises will be sung.”
Touched by his earnestness and sincerity, her face became serious. “His fate,” she said quietly, “was in higher hands than mine.”
“Very sure,” he agreed with equal gravity. “Yet even Providence needs human instruments.”
She found herself wondering, later that day, what the reactions of the old rani would be when she heard of the little prince’s recovery. On this point she was not left long in doubt. After dinner she received a message from Chawand Rao asking her if she would take coffee with him and his aunt in the library. When she went there she found the old woman, though far from cordial, no longer showed any signs of active hostility.
Beyond a formal congratulation to Stella on her patient’s turn for the better, she made no reference to her grandnephew’s illness. But when Chawand Rao left them alone presently for a few minutes, she returned to the subject.
“Nurse Hantley,” she said, avoiding Stella’s eyes, “I do not know whether it is your newfangled methods or my prayers to the gods that have saved Prithviraj from death. Who can tell? But you may rest assured that the threat I uttered will not be fulfilled. The affair of the emeralds will go no farther than the walls of the palace.”
Stella gave her a glance of contempt. “Even you, Your Highness, cannot stem the stream of gossip once it has been set flowing. And by the way, when next you go on your prying expeditions, it might be as well to change your perfume. A trail of sandalwood is altogether too noticeable.”
If she had expected to annoy the old rani by this last observation she was mistaken. A gleam of admiration flickered in the sunken eyes, and reedy laughter hissed from the lean, jewel-bedecked throat.
“You are less stupid than many of your countrywomen,” the old lady declared, with something approaching geniality. “So much less stupid that you will not expect me to apologize for what I did with the best motives!”
“No, I have never expected an apology from you!” Stella’s scorn was deepening.
“So much better to understand each other!” The old woman took from the filigree basket at her elbow a piece of red betel nut wrapped in silver paper and, peeling it with her thin, gem-encrusted fingers, began to chew it with quiet enjoyment. “It’s no good offering you pan,” she sa
id casually. “A succession of English governesses—for none, alas, could stand the air of Bhindi more than a few months—taught me the uselessness of inviting your countrywomen to indulge in it. But, there—East and West have different ways. They meet, but they never mix and mingle.”
“Then perhaps you’ll let me help myself to a cigarette,” Stella suggested imperturbably.
“Certainly, my dear Miss Hantley.” And then after a brief pause she observed, “I suppose you will be leaving us tomorrow!”
Before Stella could reply to this remark, Chawand Rao reentered the library, and very soon, pleading weariness as her excuse, Stella said good-night to them and went to her own room—to sleep, for the first time since her arrival at the palace, without fear for the safety of herself or her patient.
Prithviraj proved to be making excellent progress the next day, and she began to think seriously about making arrangements for the return journey to Ghasirabad. She could hardly, she decided, leave that very day, however much the old rani wished it; but when Chawand Rao made his morning call to the sickroom, and she broached the subject to him, he was dismayed at the idea of her going back to Ghasirabad until the little prince was up and about again. Even when she reminded him that she had an employer to consider, he refused to be philosophical but remained plunged in gloom. When he had gone, Jeythoo also began to lament her approaching departure, declaring that the women’s quarter had been a different place since her arrival.
“The old rani won’t be sorry to see the last of me, anyway,” Stella returned, as she examined the newly aired pile of linen that the ayah had brought her.
Jeythoo’s broad brown face took on rather a curious expression.
“For that there is a reason, memsahib.”
Stella shrugged her slim shoulders. “Now that the prince! is well on the road to recovery, I should not have thought she would have cared whether I was here or not.”
The ayah hesitated. “She is of the old school and fears His Highness’s unorthodox notions. She knows that here and there Indian rulers have made marriages with white women—”
“Good heavens!” Stella gave a ripple of laughter. “Poor Chawand Rao! Can’t he employ an English nurse without being suspected of matrimonial intentions? Anyway, Jeythoo, I hope you have too much sense to encourage such nonsensical notions. In two days’ time at the latest I shall be returning to Ghasirabad, and a week or two after that I go with my employer to Rajdor. Within a few: months I shall be back in England—and the chances of my ever revisiting Bhindi are remote.”
“That is for the gods to decide.” The woman’s face was blank. “Meanwhile I will see that the memsahib’s box is packed—so far as can be done—tomorrow night.”
In spite of her expressed determination to leave the palace so soon, Stella was by no means wholehearted over the matter. She gave not a moment’s credence to Jeythoo’s hint about Chawand Rao, but though she felt strongly that it was her duty to join Miss Jellings with the least possible delay, she dreaded meeting Roger again and the inevitable encounter with Allegra. They were ordeals, she felt, too painful to be borne.
But the first trial—that of meeting Roger—had to be undergone that very morning. She was still busy around the sickroom when Hussein, wearing a positively pleasant expression for once, came to tell her that Fendish Sahib had come to see her. He was with Verle Sahib at the moment in one of the downstairs anterooms and would be obliged if she would join them for a few minutes. An attendant, he added, would conduct her.
Her heart began to hammer so violently she could scarcely speak. But a nod was sufficient answer for Hussein who salaamed and went his way.
Agitated as she felt, her (first instinct was womanlike—to make sure of her appearance, and pulling off her white overall she hurried to her own room and examined herself quickly in the long hanging mirror. The severest critic would have found it hard to disparage the reflection that greeted her, and she herself could find no fault with the dress of pale blue linen that so perfectly fitted her slender figure, nor with the spotless white shoes and stockings. It was her face that was all wrong, she thought with dissatisfaction. And even when she had run a comb through her yellow curls and brought a powder puff and lipstick into play, she was not much better pleased.
I ought to be glad if he thinks I look like a hag, she told herself as she followed the waiting orderly through the labyrinth of passages down to the main wing of the ground floor. At a curtained doorway, not far she guessed from the big entrance hall, the man paused and coughed, then drew the hangings aside and ushered her into Roger’s presence.
For a moment she forgot that Armand should also have been at this meeting. All she could think of was that she was with Roger again—Roger, who alone, of all the men she had met in her twenty-five years of existence, had the power to move her heart to ecstasy—or agony.
“It was good of you to send Hussein to look after me.” She was the first to speak.
“I would have gone crazy if I hadn’t done something.” His voice was rough. “Stella, how could you have walked into such danger?”
She raised her deep blue, dark-lashed eyes and looked at him steadily.
“There was a life to save, Roger!”
“I know, and one half of me is all admiration for your courage and skill, but when I think of what might have happened to you...!”
“I never had anything to fear from Chawand Rao—if that is what you mean, Roger.”
“My dear, you don’t understand the Oriental mind. Do you know why I’ve come now to fetch you away?”
She looked bewildered. “Now! Do you mean that you expect me to leave with you this very morning? Why, Roger, it’s impossible!”
“Is the prince out of danger?” Well she knew those brief, incisive questions of his.
“Yes, but he still needs care and attention.”
“Then his own people must give it to him. I’m going to tell you what brought me tearing over here like this. It’s a message Hussein sent secretly to me. He swears that he heard His Highness declare that he was going to do his best to keep you here—for good!”
“There must be some mistake!” Stella’s tone was incredulous. And then, suddenly recalling Jeythoo’s hint given that very morning, she paled a little. Could it be that she was wrong in her estimate of Chawand Rao? Must she believe that far from being the idealist she had supposed, he was a schemer and sensualist? Her mind flew over the incidents that had colored the last few days, and she could find no support for this base view of His Highness. And she repeated again, with even more conviction. “I’m sure there is some mistake. I simply can’t believe it.”
The curtain moved then; and Armand came in with a muttered, “Excuse me!” And at once Roger turned to him.
“I’ve been trying to convince Miss Hantley she shouldn’t stay here another day,” he exclaimed. “She I won’t listen to me; maybe she’s got more faith in you. Anyway, you’d better tell her frankly whether you think I ought to take her away this morning or leave her here a day or two longer.”
“I think you ought to go with Fendish, Stella,” Armand’s gentleness was in striking contrast to Roger’s brusque manner. “There are rumors going around the palace and it wouldn’t be wise for you to stay.”
Stella made a helpless little gesture. “In that case I suppose I’d better pack up and come away. I shall have to make some sort of apology to His Highness—”
“I’m afraid you won’t be able to do that.” Armand was looking a little troubled. “He’s out shooting sand grouse and won’t be back until about four o’clock!”
“So much the better for Miss Hantley. It will save her an embarrassing interview. Now, Stella, how soon can you be ready?” His impatience to get her out of the palace would have been ludicrous, had there not been such a serious side lo it.
Stella reflected quickly. “In about twenty minutes,” she said. “I must leave a note for His Highness—and by the way—” and she gave each of them a steady look “�
�I shall give Miss Jellings’s urgent need of me as my excuse for leaving so suddenly.”
Even Roger did not protest at this. He said more calmly, “I’ll wait for you here, and the minute you’re ready we’ll make a start. I’ve brought some sandwiches for our lunch. We can eat them going along.”
“Very well!” Not knowing whether to be pleased or vexed at being hurried away in this unceremonious fashion, she went back to the women’s quarters, and half an hour later was climbing into the seat beside Roger and setting out with him on the long, rough road to Ghasirabad.
CHAPTER EIGHT
To her relief the drive afforded no opportunities for intimate conversation. Not only was the presence of Hussein in the back seat of the car a deterrent, but the constant jolting made it difficult to exchange more than an occasional sentence. She felt certain, however, from his manner that so far Allegra had not told him that Stella Hantley and Star Lefreyne were one and the same person, and wondered feverishly what the other girl’s plans—and motives—might be.
If only Jelly and I could go on to Rajdor without meeting Allegra! she thought desperately. It would be much the easiest way out of the tangle. Yet the prospect of parting with Roger—in the determination never to see him again—was such torment it seemed as though her heart was being torn in pieces; and she knew that as long as she lived the wounds would never completely heal.
Why was fate so cruel, she wondered. Why could she not have fallen for Armand Verle? He was attractive enough, in all conscience. Why should it be this big taciturn man with the hot temper and quick pride who should have won her love—this man who was barred from her, so far as marriage was concerned, by the haunting figure of Allegra Glydd?
The first personal remark he addressed to her was made as he set her down, bruised and weary, at the Ghasirabad rest house.
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