and he will strike at our love some day, Carmelita. I don't think he has given up wanting you. I want you to promise me to have nothing more to do with him."
Her cheeks were burning with insulted pride. Why was he sitting here talking to her, Carmelita de Cordoba, as if she were a very small child unable to take care of herself? This man he was maligning was her friend. True, she did not like Rao-Singh especially and she did distrust him a little, at times. But as for Dudley believing a slimy piece of men's gossip about her and Rao-Singh, working himself into a passion over it and giving her orders upon the strength of it—
She turned upon him, lips twitching with rage, and snapped, "Nonsense." They were swinging in front of Carmelita's cottage and before he could go further with the matter she had stopped the car and was flashing up the steps of the piazza without a backward glance at him. He sat for a moment in the seat of the runabout and then slowly followed her, but to another room.
Carmelita, thoroughly angered, could banish her commonsense and do almost any foolish thing. Carmelita, pride deeply wounded by the one man she loved and already taut nerves rasped by what she considered his implied aceusation, could yet mask her feelings under an
