Lord Esketh becomes aware of this, and when Safti saves him after he is mauled by a wounded tiger, he asks Safti about Edwina. Safti admits his love and Lord Esketh, now sympathetic toward this good man's plight, describes their marriage in blunt terms. Safti says he already knows about Edwina’s past; he forgives anything she has done. When Safti and Edwina talk about this, she finally confesses that her attraction to him has grown into something “so much more” that it frightens her. Safti believes that she can grow and change. Edwina says it isn’t possible. Everything about it is wrong. Meanwhile, Fern Simon (Joan Caulfield) has returned home after graduating from the University of Iowa. The daughter of missionaries, she grew up in Ranchipur watching Ransome from afar. Her dreams of going back to teacher’s college for graduate study are fading because they cannot afford it. At the reception, she diffidently asks Ransome for a loan of $1,000. He points out that this would wreck her reputation in Ranchipur, and moved by her disappointment, he agrees to help her get back to school somehow. It has been raining off and on, but it begins in earnest, now, and continues through the film until the end. Fern runs away from home and turns up soaking wet in Ransome’s bungalow. She is thrilled with her plan—to ruin her reputation so her mother will have to let her go away to school, even though nothing will have happened because she will sleep on the sofa. He tells her she must go home immediately, bundles her into a raincoat—and kisses her. He apologizes and tells her the truth about himself: a disillusioned idealist who grew sick of the postwar world and hid in Ranchipur and the bottle. She meekly goes home. At a party, Ransome, drunk and angry, warns Edwina to stay away from Safti, a friend whom he admires. Off-camera, the Maharani has ordered Edwina to leave the palace and Ranchipur. Safti says he will go with her. Suddenly, Ranchipur is ravaged by a two-fold natural disaster: a series of earthquakes that shatter the dam and many buildings, and the ensuing flood, exacerbated by pouring rain, which wipes out buildings and bridges.