"Is it so very bad? Oh, is it?" Mary heard her say.

"Awfully," the young man answered in a trembling voice. "Awfully, Mrs.
Lennox. You ought to have gone to the hills two weeks ago."

The Mem Sahib wrung her hands.

"Oh, I know I ought!" she cried. "I only stayed to go to that silly
dinner party. What a fool I was!"

At that very moment such a loud sound of wailing broke out from the
servants' quarters that she clutched the young man's arm, and Mary stood
shivering from head to foot. The wailing grew wilder and wilder.

"What is it? What is it?" Mrs. Lennox gasped.

"Some one has died," answered the boy officer. "You did not say it had
broken out among your servants."

"I did not know!" the Mem Sahib cried. "Come with me! Come with me!" and
she turned and ran into the house.

After that appalling things happened, and the mysteriousness of the
morning was explained to Mary. The cholera had broken out in its most
fatal form and people were dying like flies. The Ayah had been taken ill
in the night, and it was because she had just died that the servants had
wailed in the huts. Before the next day three other servants were dead
and others had run away in terror. There was panic on every side, and
dying people in all the bungalows.