Nurse in India by Juliet Armstrong

someone else in the room.
    It ’ s the old rani, she thought, imagining for the moment that s h e was still at Bhindi, then opening her eyes realized suddenly that she was back in her room at the Ghasirabad re st house, and that the intruder who had aroused her was none other than the girl on whom her thoughts had been centered with such intensity during the past few weeks — Allegra Glydd.
    “Excuse me for butting in like this.” Allegra, cool as ever and looking extremely ornamental in a plain but beautifully cut dress of lettuce-green silk, walked to the end of ; the bed and stood looking down at Stella. “No one was around, so I just slipped in. I thought we ’ d better have a word together in private—before we meet in public, as I supposed we must. ”
    “Oh, yes?” Deliberately Stella resolved to lay the burden of the conversation on Allegra. It was she, after all, who had sought this interview.
    Just for a moment Allegra was taken aback by Stella ’ s apparent nonchalance: But she quickly recovered her poise and inquired lightly whether there was a cigarette around. She had left her case, she said, in her other handbag.
    Stella felt a flicker of ironic amusement at the request. I n one respect, anyway, Allegra had not changed: she still had the scrounging habit. She nodded in the direction of the cumbersome teak chest of drawers that served as her dressing table, then watched the other girl stroll over to the shagreen box that lay there and abstract a cigarette. Observing her graceful, unhurried movements Stella ’ s amusement died away, and instead there came a stirring of the old anger. Child of a hard-up but aristocratic family, Allegra had not been forced to take up arduous, uncongenial work on leaving the stage. Family friends and relatives had no doubt smoothed her path and made a pleasant existence possible, for leisure and an easy life set their stamp on a person as plainly as physical labor.
    Anyone might guess, she thought bitterly, that dancing is the only hard work Allegra has ever undertaken: she ’ s as light on her feet as ever and buoyant as a feather. But no one, meeting me, would ever imagine I, had been anything but a drudge.
    An instant later she was ashamed of that reflection, knowing well that she should feel nothing but pride in the profession that had sheltered her and kept her during, the past five years; and she was ashamed, too, of the sense of smoldering rage that Allegra evoked in her. It was impertinent of the girl to invade her privacy in this fashion; but perhaps that insolence hid better feelings. At any rate she should hear what Allegra had to say before passing judgment on her.
    A brief minute, or two, however, made it clear that Allegra was even more unscrupulous and more brazen than she had been five years ago. She perched herself on the arm of a nearby chair, blew a succession of smoke rings and then declared blandly, “Star, my dear, there ’ s got to be a showdown. There ’ s only room for one of us in the Fendish family, and that one is yours truly.”
    “And what precisely do you mean by that?” Stella ’ s tone was level.
    “That I am going to marry Jim Fendish, and that you are not going to marry Roger. As a sister-in-law you would be—well, inconvenient.”
    With a strenuous effort at concealing her sick disgust and fury, Stella raised her eyebrows. “Your imagination seems as vivid as ever, Allegra. I ’ ve no intention of choosing a husband from the Fendish family. I can assure you that the idea of our being in any way connected i s as distasteful to me as it can possibly be to you. Though of course—” and she met Allegra ’ s brown eyes “—it ’ s always a shade worse for the wrongdoer, in these cases, than for the innocent one.”
    Allegra ’ s glance wavered, but she threw back her sleek brown head and gave a little ripple of laughter.
    “That sort of moral maxim is a bit out-of-date,” she observed. “When people talk about the pangs