She had suddenly left the Ranee's service to become body-woman to Leonie; without a single reference to the time when she had been nurse to Leonie as a baby.
Who was keeping her silent, and why? And what was she doing, and who was she with in the deserted temple in the jungle?
Certainly not the Ranee's. She was wrapped up in her duties toward the fast ageing Rajah, and her only son, who seemed much the same as other sons of princes.
Having finally decided that the answer to the problem lay in the temple, to the temple he decided to go, more with the intention of having a look round than with any definite plan.
The decision was made with the fixed though unspoken determination that if the solving of the problem should involve a sojourn of ten years in India, for ten years he would remain.
He hired a guide and a coolie, both of whom looked exactly like any other guide and coolie, and having much to think out, and sure thinking being anything but a rapid process with him, also because he did not wish to draw too much attention to his movements, he chose as a means of conveyance the ugly flat-bottomed public paddle-boat which floats unconcernedly down the Hoogli from Calcutta, through the bigger creeks of the Sunderbunds, and up the Pusaka River to Kulna.
If you want a few days' rest, or time in which to unravel a knot, pray take that means of locomotion; you can be dropped anywhere into a _nukur_ or native boat which will deposit you for a few annas on any island you choose, but don't do it if you are in a hurry, or are filled with a desire to see the lesser creeks, and the quite small ones, where tigers are supposed to sit in rows upon the water's edge, monkeys to swing across the water by means of the creepers interlacing the dark and dismal trees, and crocodiles to lie in tumbled masses waiting to be turned into portmanteau, dressing-case, or shoes.
Cuxson's method and brain were rather like his gait; as he had said in Rockham cove, he was _slow_! He could not and never had, even at Harrow, been able to run a hundred yards without becoming most uncomfortably blown; but he could walk anyone to death at a set plodding steady tramp, accomplishing twenty miles without turning a hair; while after a series of terrific spurts, and enforced periods of rest, his companions would give up dishevelled, sweating, and unpleasantly mortified miles away from the desired goal.