Ida's ways were certainly not
Noreen's, and the latter sometimes felt tempted to disapprove of her
excessive familiarity with Captain Bain and one or two others. But the next
moment she took herself severely to task for being censorious of the elder
woman, who must surely know better how to behave towards men than a young
unmarried girl who had been buried so long in the jungle. And Ida did not
guess why sometimes her repentant little friend's caresses were so fervent
and her desire to please her so manifest, and ascribed it all to her own
sweetness of nature.
The coming of the Rains did not check the gaiety of the dwellers on the
mountain-tops, though torrential downpours had to be faced on black nights
in shrouded rickshas and dripping _dandies_, though incessant lightning lit
up the road to the club or theatre, and the thunder made it difficult to
hear the music of the band in the ballroom. Noreen missed nothing of the
revels. But in all the whirl of gaiety and pleasure in which her days were
passed her thoughts turned more and more to the great forest lying
thousands of feet below her, and the man who passed his lonely days
therein.
Little news of him came to her. He never wrote, and her brother seldom
mentioned him in his letters; for during Parker's absence on two months'
privilege leave from Ranga Duar Dermot did not quit it often and very
rarely visited the planters' club or the bungalows of any of its members.
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