Delhi. Dalel, with a sneer adulterating his frown, looked at her
vengefully, 'Wah! thou art a poor creature, putting the blame on
others, after woman's way. Thy wiles are useless, forsooth, because
the boy is a milksop. Then a strange mem comes and he sits drinking
wine--my wine, look you, for his servant required it of me--until the
dawn; then comes home tipsy after losing himself among the tent-pegs.'

This was Dalel's version of the incident. It interested his hearer into
provoking details by denial.

'It is a lie,' she said calmly.

'Daughter of the bazaars, 'tis true! did I not wait till nigh three
with champagne and devil-bone, yet he came not? Did not his servant
tell me but now I had stinted them in wine? Did not the tent pitchers
say he wandered as a madman among the pegs? Was he not at me, even now,
to get this pot for this mem, this woman?' So far his anger had swept
him past its first cause; now he remembered and harked back to it. 'How
came he by the pot, I say? how hath he seen a woman of our race?'

'Ask the Diwân,' she replied coolly; 'for me that measure is over, I
will dance to another tune.' And as she spoke, though her feet scarcely
shifted, a new rhythm came to these jingling bells. ''Tis odd,' she
murmured in a singing tone, as she lifted the pot and held it out at
arm's-length, 'we come back to this old thing at every turn, and now
his mem wants it. Leave it with me a space, O Mirza Dalel Beg. I will
set it yonder in the niche where I take the seed of dreams; it may
bring wisdom to them.'

Dalel gave a contemptuous grunt.

'Thou art no better than an old spay-wife with thy dreams and omens and
fine talk. Sure the Hindu pig, from whom I took thee, hath infected
thee with his idolatrous notions----'

'See, I go not back to them and him,' she interrupted quickly, 'leave
it, I say, if thou art wise. If the sahib seek it of thee, say one of
thy women knows the owner and makes arrangement. Tis true, and thou
lovest the truth, O Dalel.'

As usual, her recklessness cowed him, and when he had gone and she sat
rolling the opium pellets in her palms, the Ayôdhya pot lay in the
niche. Something had declared in its favour, and wisdom lay in
humouring the mysterious will which nine times out of ten insisted on
playing the game of life in its own fashion. Then she lay back half
asleep, half awake, her hands clasped behind her smooth head, her eyes
fixed on the shifting pattern beneath the glaze. The sun climbing up
sent a bar of shine through a chink in the balcony roof. It slanted
into the recesses, undulated over her curved body and reaching the
niche made the Ayôdhya pot glow like a sapphire. But by this time
Chândni was dreaming, so she did not hear the merry laughter of a
cavalcade passing through the Mori gate on its way to the canvas city
in the camping ground. A cavalcade of aliens, with Rose Tweedie on a
camel, her English side-saddle, perched on the top of a native pad,
giving her such height that she was forced to stoop.

'Another inch, Miss Tweedie,' cried George gaily, 'and you would have
had to dismount; you will have to cultivate humility before trying
Paradise!'

'Sure Miss Rose is an angel already,' put in Dan Fitzgerald.

But Lewis Gordon rode gloomily behind; partly because he himself was in
a shockingly bad temper, partly because the camel he rode was a
misanthropist. And these two causes arose the one from the other, since
it was not his usual mount. That, when Rose Tweedie had taken advantage
of Mrs. Boynton's absence to desert the dhoolies which were the only
alternative conveyance across this peculiarly sandy march, had been
impounded for the young lady on account of its easy paces. He
remembered those paces ruefully, as, with low-pitched indignation he
wondered why she could not have stuck to the more ladylike dhooli. Yet
she looked well on the beast and rode it better than most men would
have done on a first trial; than he would, at any rate. But these were
aggravations, not palliations, of her offence; still, when, on
dismounting, she came straight up to him, her natty top-boots in full
evidence, the huge sola hat, borrowed from her father, making her slim
upright figure show straighter and slenderer than ever, he was forced
to confess that if she did do these horrible things she did them with
infinite _verve_ and good taste.

'I'm so sorry, Mr. Gordon!' she exclaimed eagerly, 'indeed I didn't
know of the exchange father made till we had started, or I'd have stuck
to the dhooli--indeed I would. What an awful brute it was! I saw it
giving you a dreadful time. Do let me send you over some Elliman?'

'I'm not such a duffer as all that, Miss Tweedie,' he began.

'I didn't mean that, you know I didn't; but if you won't have the
Elliman, take a hot bath, it's the next best thing I know for
stiffness. You can tell your bearer to take the water from our
bath-fire. And thanks so much, I enjoyed the ride immensely. Mr.
Fitzgerald raced me at the finish, and I beat by a good head.'

'A particularly good head, I should say,' he replied, out of sheer love
of teasing, for he knew how intensely she disliked his artificial
manner with women. The fact annoyed him in his turn. It was another of
her unwarrantable assumptions of superiority; nevertheless he followed
her advice about the bath.

Indeed Hodinuggur for the rest of the day claimed suppleness of joint,
in the mind at least. We all know the modern mansion where, entering a
Pompeian hall you pass up a Jacobean staircase, along Early English
corridors, and Japanese landings to Queen Ann drawing-rooms; mansions
of culture, where present common-sense is relegated to the servants'
attics. Hodinuggur was as disturbing to a thoughtful person unused to
gymnastics; perhaps more so because a certain glibness of tongue in
slurring over chasms and ignoring abysses, became necessary when, as
fell to Lewis Gordon's lot, most of the day passed in interviews.
Solemn interviews of State, then personal interviews with an ulterior
object, finally begging interviews _pur et simple_. The other members
of the camp, however, had an easy time of it, their attendance not
being required. Dan Fitzgerald passed most of his day in vain hopes of
a _tête-à-tête_ with Mrs. Boynton, for he was on tenter-hooks to
explain the feeling with which, on returning late to the camp, he had
found it in commotion over her loss; but Gwen, who always dreaded Dan
when he had reasonable cause for emotion, avoided him dexterously,
chiefly by encouraging George, who was nothing loth to spend his day in
camp. At first the lad felt no little vexed to find himself shy and
constrained among so large a party; but this feeling wore off quickly,
and when he came, ready dressed for tennis, into the drawing-room tent
at tea-time it seemed quite natural to be once more amid easy-chairs
and knick-knacks, to see the pianette at which Rose sang her Scotch
songs with such spirit littered with music, and to find her busy at a
table set with all manner of delightful things to eat. He was boy
enough to try so many of them, that Dan had to apologise for his
subordinate's greed before they trooped out laughing to the very
different world which lay beyond the treble plies of the tent--that
mystical veil of white, and blue, and red, which, during the camping
months, hangs between India and its rulers, giving rise to so much
misunderstanding on both sides. It is the fashion nowadays to
accentuate the faults of the latter, but much of the bad name given by
superficial observers to Anglo-Indian society, is the result of that
curious lightheartedness which springs from the necessity for
relaxation, consequent on the gloveless hold India exacts on the
realities and responsibilities of life. The saying, 'Let us eat and
drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die,' is hurled unfairly at
pleasure-seekers all the world over, simply because merriment has
become associated with a low type of amusement. If we change the verbs,
the blame vanishes; since to live happily is the end and aim of all
morality. For happily means worthily to those who have any moral sense.
Then in India the pursuit of pleasure must needs be personal, for there
are no licensed purveyors of amusement. You cannot go to a box-office,
buy seats, spend the day seriously, dine at a restaurant, and take a
hansom to the play. As a rule you have to begin by building the
theatre. So it is in all things, and surely after a hard day's work in
bringing sweetness and light (and law) within reach of the heathen,
even a judge with a bald head may unbend to youthful pastimes, without
breaking the Ten Commandments!

But Colonel Tweedie was not bald, and he played tennis vigorously
in what Rose called the duffers' game, with Mrs. Boynton, the
under-secretary, and Lewis Gordon who pleaded shortsightedness as an
excuse for not joining the Seniors against the Juniors, where Rose and
George challenged all comers. Yet he owned it was pretty enough to see
the former sending back Dan's vicious cuts with a setting of her teeth
ending in a smile either at success or failure. Pleasant to see the
alertness, confidence, confidentialness between the boy and girl; to
hear his quick 'Look out,' evoke the breathless 'I've--got it,' as the
ball whizzed to some unguarded spot. It was a fierce struggle and the
wide-eyed villagers who had trooped out to see the strange doings on
their ancestral threshing-floor, gathered instinctively round the
harder game.

'Ari, sister!' murmured a deep-bosomed mother of many to her gossip, as
they squatted on one of the heaps of chaff which had been swept aside
from the hard beaten floor. 'That one in the short skirt is a
_budmârsh_.[1] Her man will need his hands.' Yet an unrestrained
chuckle ran round the female portion of the audience as Dan,
over-running himself in a hopeless attempt after the impossible,
scattered a group of turbaned pantaloons, who, retreating with shaking
heads to re-form further off, muttered in wondering rebuke, 'Hai! Hai!
does not shame come to her.' But a third section, ranged in rows, gave
an exotic 'hooray!'--a ridiculous, feeble little cheer, started by a
young man in a black alpaca coat, and accompanied by still feebler
clapping. This was the village school and its master, claiming its
right to be a judge of 'crickets.'

'You have the better half of creation on your side, Miss Tweedie,'
remarked Lewis, when, the games being over, the men were resuming their
coats. 'What is more, the rising generation of the worser half also.
The boys were unanimous for the "Miss"; we miserable men being left to
the support of past ages. India is doomed. Another decade will see
woman's rights rampant.'

She turned on him readily, as she always did. 'The boys applauded
because the rising generation, thank heaven, is being taught to love
fair play--even towards women.'

'At it again!' interrupted Mrs. Boynton plaintively, 'really I must get
you two bound over to keep the peace.'

'Then I shall have to hire another camel for my luggage,' said Lewis
gravely, 'for Miss Tweedie knocks me and my arguments to bits.'

Gwen turned aside impatiently, saying in a lower voice, 'How foolish
you are, Lewis! One would have thought you would have tired of it by
this time.'

'On the contrary,' he replied in his ordinary tone: 'the bloom is
perennial. I wither beneath the ice of Miss Tweedie's snubs, and revive
beneath the sun of her smiles like--like a bachelor's button.'

And Rose did smile. Her contempt always seemed to pass by the man
himself, and rest on his opinions. Even there, much as she loathed
them, she was forced to confess that they did not seem to affect his
actions; that it was impossible to conceive of his behaving to any
woman, save as a gentleman should behave. Yet this thought aggravated
the offence of his manner by enhancing its malice aforethought, and
made her frown again.

'Come! there is light enough for a single yet, Mr. Keene,' she said
imperiously, and George, with one regretful glance at Mrs. Boynton,
obeyed. Lewis Gordon looked after them, shrugged his shoulders, and
strolled off to the messroom-tent.

'It really is shameful of Lewis to tease Miss Tweedie as he does,'
began Gwen, who, finding herself unavoidably paired with Dan, instantly
started what she thought a safe topic of conversation. He looked at her
with absent eyes.

'A shame, is it? but when a man likes a girl he is very apt----'

She broke in with a petulant laugh. 'Are you asleep, Dan? What could
induce you to think that?'

'What? Why, love of course! Set a thief to catch a thief. A man can't
be in love himself without----'

He certainly was not asleep! but she managed to double back to safer
ground. Yet his words recurred to her that evening during the half hour
_tête-à-tête_ which she accorded with the utmost regularity to Colonel
Tweedie in his capacity of host; Rose meanwhile singing songs to the
younger men who gathered round the piano, leaving those two decorously
to the sofa.

'There is a little song I want Mrs. Boynton to hear,' called the
Colonel during a pause. 'I forget its name--you haven't sung it
for a long time, and I used to be so fond of it. A little Jacobite
song--really a charming air, Mrs. Boynton.' Rose flushed visibly--at
least to the feminine eyes in the party--and shook her head.

'But you must remember it, my dear,' persisted her father; 'do try.'

'Oh yes! please do try! I should so like to hear it,' echoed Gwen
curiously, her eyes full on the blush. Rose, conscious of it, felt
herself a fool, and looked still more uncomfortable.

'Talking of Jacobite songs,' remarked an indifferent voice beside her,
'I wonder, Miss Tweedie, if you know a great favourite of mine, called
"Lewie Gordon"--don't laugh, you boys, it's rude. If so, please sing
it. I haven't heard it for years; people are always afraid of making me
vain.'

She gave him a quick, grateful look, as, with a nod, she broke into the
song.

             'O send Lewie Gordon hame,
              And the lad I daurna name,
              Tho' his back be to the wa',
              Here's to him that's far awa'.'

She sang with greater spirit than before, a sort of glad recognition of
his kindly tact leading up to the decision of the climax:

             'That's the lad that I'll gang wi'.'

Yet after all, amid the chorus of thanks, she heard him say in his
worst manner, '"The lad I daurna name!" how like a woman!' And he added
to the offence; for, when the little under-secretary remarked
diffidently that he had always understood that the song referred to
Charles Edward, though whether to the old or the young Pretender he
could not say, Lewis, as he dawdled away to his nightly task of
breaking up the _tête-à-tête_, murmured that at any rate it referred to
a _pretendu_. But Rose had caught Gwen's appealing look from the sofa
also, and rising, closed the piano with a bang and suggested a round
game. If her intention was to punish the offender, who hated that form
of amusement, she failed ignominiously; for he sat on the 'Stool of
Repentance' with perfect nonchalance, and, when it came to her turn,
paid her such double-edged, charmingly caustic little compliments, that
she had to join in the laugh they raised. It was, in fact, past
midnight ere the Colonel, with many allusions to the delight of such
company, said they really must go to bed, and they trooped in a body
out of the big tent to seek their several quarters.

'I'm glad not to make a casual of you to-night,' said Mrs. Boynton
softly to George.

'Almost wish you were,' he replied, giving a rueful look towards the
red brick prison on the farther side of the canal. 'This is home; that
is exile.'

Dan nodded his head sympathetically. 'I know that feeling. It comes
from jungle stations. And the bungalow does look cheerless in
comparison. Odd; for one naturally associates a camp with wars and
tumults, battles, murders, and sudden death; all the evils of a
transitory world, in fact. But you must have noticed, Mrs. Boynton, the
extraordinary air of peace, security, almost of permanence which tents
have in the moonlight. Look! might they not be solid blocks of marble
fastened by silver cords?'

'I noticed it last night when I was watching them being put up,' began
George unguardedly. Mrs. Boynton looked up quickly. Rose, who was
leaning against a rope by the door of her tent which stood next the
mess, glanced along the line of the camp.

'Silver cords and marble blocks,' she echoed. 'Yes! but it sounds like
the New Jerusalem.'

'I always thought,' remarked Lewis Gordon argumentatively, 'that it was
the tents of Midian. I'm sure some one told me so when I learnt hymns.
Or was it hosts of Midian and tents of Ishmael? Anyhow, they had
nothing to do with Paradise, and I for one have been prowling round
long enough. So good-night, Gwen; don't grow wings in the night,
please; it would be so disconcerting. Good-night, Miss Tweedie.'

Being close beside her he held out his hand.

'Good-night; I hope you are not very stiff.'

'I almost wish I were, for then you would sympathise with
misfortune--like a woman,' he replied in a low voice, and as he passed
to his own tent next hers, she heard him quote the lines--

             'Tho his back be to the wa',
              Here's to him that's far awa'.'

She looked after him, her face showing soft in the moonlight, then,
with a good-night to the others, disappeared in her turn.

George lingered, giving still more rueful glances at the bungalow. 'I
suppose I must be off too. Oh! by the way! it's all right about the
Ayôdhya pot. Dalel Beg tells me his women know the owner, so you will
have it to-morrow. Good-night, Fitzgerald.'

Dan, thus left alone to walk two tents-length with Gwen, felt that fate
was on his side at last; more probably _she_ was, since her fine tact
told her it was never wise to ignore his passion entirely. Besides,
something in her shrank from treating him always as a mere outsider.

'I've been longing for this chance all day,' he began at once in a tone
that was in itself a caress.

'Do you think I am quite blind?' she interrupted, a trifle petulantly;
'the only wonder is that every one in the camp didn't see it also. You
are so reckless, Dan! Of course you wanted to tell me how you felt when
I was lost, and all that; as if I couldn't imagine it!' she gave in to
a smile that was almost tender as she spoke--'Why, Dan! I can see you!
with a face yards long, and the whole camp, Chief and all, under orders
in half a minute. Fire-escapes, life-preservers, first aid to the
wounded, everything mortal man could devise to avert disaster, ready
before the rest had time to think! Do you suppose I don't know what you
are, Dan?' The odd, composite ring in her voice sank as she added, in a
lower tone, 'sometimes I almost wish I didn't.'

They had reached the place where their ways separated; hers to the last
tent forward, his to the second row, and she held out her hand with a
smile to say good-night. His heart beat hard at her half-reluctant
admission of praise; besides, Gwen Boynton was not the sort of woman
who could smile thus, and yet expect to end the interview then and
there; perhaps, again, she did not wish it so to end. In her relations
with this man, she often found it difficult to know what she did, or
did not, desire.

'Gwen,' he said eagerly, standing close, with his warm nervous hands
clasping hers, 'did you think of me--then?--when you knew you were
lost, I mean--did you, Gwen?--I don't often ask anything of you, my
darling--you might tell me--It isn't much to ask--Did you, Gwen?'

She gave something between a laugh and a sob. 'Did I? Oh! Dan, you
know I did. There, that is enough--you said that was all you wanted.
Good-night, Dan.'

He went over to his quarters happy as a king. As for Gwen, the personal
influence his immediate presence had over her passed away quickly, and
that which his real absence from her life invariably produced did not
come to soften the curious dread with which she recognised, that in her
trouble of the day before, her first thought had indeed been for him.
How foolish she had been in letting him re-enter her life at all! but
he had come back in her first loneliness when the future had seemed
very black. Now it was different, now it was once more that choice
between poverty and comfort which she had made in her girlhood. With
what pain, none--save Dan, who, alas! always understood--would believe.
And if the choice was necessary then, what was it now with her acquired
habits, her knowledge of the world? They would both be miserable if
they married without money. Then the thought of the bills came, as it
always did to remind her of the tie they imposed. Even if Lewis, whom
she liked and respected, were to make up his mind to marry, she could
not accept him without dismissing Dan. Yet how could she dismiss him,
even for his food, until that money was repaid? Poor Dan! he loved her
dearly, and in a way she cared for him as she had never cared for any
of her other lovers. Yet the decision which had turned out so
comfortably ten years before was still the right decision. Many of
those lovers had been as devoted to her; and yet they had recovered
from their rejection. Then the remembrance of George Keene's admission
that he had been out watching the stars made her smile. He was a nice
boy, who already deemed her an angel; but Lewis objected to wings, and
of the two that was the most convenient view for the woman.

While she was coming to this conclusion George had been looking after
her interests, for on his return to the bungalow he had been startled
by the sudden uprisal of a veiled female from a shadowy corner of his
verandah.

'I am Azîzan's mother,' said a muffled voice. 'The Mirza sent me. I
have been waiting the Huzoor's return. There is the pot if the Huzoor
will give ten rupees for it. It is much, yet the pot brings luck.'

'Ten!' echoed George in delight, taking it from her. 'Yes! you shall
have that; then I owe Azîzan also. Shall I pay you?'

'My daughter is as myself,' replied the voice. 'It is ten for the
picture, and ten for the pot.'

George fetched the money and counted it carefully into the shrouded
hand.

'That is all, I think?' he asked.

'Huzoor, that is all. May the blessing of the widow and the fatherless
go with the merciful Protector of the Poor.'

But while he was thinking, as he undressed, how pleased Mrs. Boynton
would be, the veiled figure was pausing in the moonlight to speak to
the factotum.

'You have seen nothing, you are to say nothing. And the Diwân sends
these to the servant-people.' Then came twenty careful chinks, this
time into a clutching hand, and Chândni, hurrying back to the city,
laughed silently to herself. The idea of bribing the little sahib's
servants with his own rupees would please Dalel, and put him into a
good temper again; so if this plan matured, her future would ripen with
it. As she passed the sleeping camp she paused, wondering in which tent
lay the mem who had succeeded so easily where she had failed. The
lights were out in all save two, and the double row of glistening white
roofs struck even her insensibility with a savage recognition of
undeserved peace and security. They were no better than she; no better
than those shadowy crouching figures of the village bad-characters set
out here and there to keep watch and ward, on the principle of setting
a thief to catch a thief; a plan which at least secures a deserving
criminal should thefts occur. For it was in the East that the strange
hybrid between altruism and egotism which we call a scape-goat was
invented by mankind.

                              CHAPTER VII

One of the lights Chândni saw came from Lewis Gordon's tent. He was
hard at work, not altogether from sheer industry. Sleep with him--oddly
enough in one claiming such serenity of temperament--had to be
approached discreetly, and for many days past a disturbing current of
thought had required the dam of good solid official business before he
could trust himself safely to the waters of Lethe. He had not been
constantly in his cousin's company for six weeks without learning to
appreciate her infinite charm. She was emphatically a woman to ensure a
husband's success as well as her own. A man would never have to
consider enemies with her at his side, whereas with many others--Rose
Tweedie for instance--it might be necessary to fight your wife's
battles as well as your own. This comparison of the two arose from no
conceit on his part in imagining that any choice lay with him. Simply,
he could not avoid comparing the only two women in his daily
surroundings. At the same time he was fully aware that Gwen would marry
him if he asked her, and the question which had at first assailed him
in the hall at Rajpore, recurred again and again, disturbing him
seriously by alternate attraction and repulsion. He had seen too much
of fascinating wifehood to care for possessing a specimen himself, yet
Gwen would marry him because she considered it would further their
mutual interests; and that, surely, was a more reliable foundation for
a permanent contract than a girlish affection. Quite as pleasant, too,
as the hail-fellow-well-met liking, which seemed to be Rose Tweedie's
notion of love. George Keene and she were like a couple of boys
together. The remembrance jarred, though he went on working with a
smile at the thought of her eager readiness to take up the glove on all
occasions.

Rose, meanwhile, lay awake next door frowning over the same readiness,
and then frowning at her own frowns, since what was it to her if
Lewis Gordon were nice or nasty? He himself did not care what she
thought, and would end by marrying his cousin, though in his heart of
hearts----

Rose sat up in bed angrily. What did she know or care of Lewis Gordon's
heart? _Dieu merci!_ Gwen Boynton was welcome to it, but she should not
drag George Keene captive as she seemed welcome to do. George was too
good to hang round a pretty woman, like Lewis----

This was intolerable. To escape the tyranny of thought she rose,
slipped on her white dressing-gown, lit the lamp she had extinguished,
and sat down to read a stiff book till she felt sleepy. The process was
not a long one, for she was really fatigued, and ten minutes saw her
turning down the lamp once more.

What happened next she scarcely knew; only this--a glare of light--a
feeble crash. Then fire in her eyes, her face, her hands--fire at her
feet, licking along the thin carpet, soaking up the folds of her filmy
dress. The bed lay close at hand; she was on it in a second, wrapping
the blankets round her, and beating out the runnels of flame, with
eyes, brain, and body absorbed in the immediate personal danger. When
that was over, and she looked up, she sprang to her feet on the bed
with a cry. The fire was everywhere, creeping up the sides of the tent,
filling it with suffocating smoke. She wound her trailing skirts round
her and made a dive for the first outlet--for her only chance of
escape! The thick wadded curtain swinging aside let in a wind, making
the smouldering cotton flame; but the next instant she was outside,
constrained to pause, wondering if by chance it was nothing but a bad
dream. For the camp lay serene and peaceful in the moonlight; not a
sound, not a sign, even from her own tent. She stood positively
irresolute, staring back at what she had left. Was it a dream? Then,
suddenly a faint drift of smoke rose through a crevice in the cloth.

'Mr. Gordon!--Mr. Gordon!' She burst through the thick, guided by the
light in his tent to the nearest help. 'Your knife--quick! my tent is
on fire! Quick, or the whole camp will catch!'

The blood was flowing from a cut over her forehead, one arm showed bare
through scorched muslin, the draperies caught round her were singed and
blackened, the stamp and smell of fire was on her from head to foot.
Lewis, starting to his feet, stared at her.

'Oh, quick! please, quick! Your pen-knife--anything! Cut down the
tents--Mr. Fitzgerald said it was the only----'

He had grasped the position ere she could finish, snatched up a
hunting-knife and was out; she, with a pen-knife, close at his heels.

'Good God! how the wind has risen,' he muttered, as they ran. 'No, not
mine!--The mess-tent first; the wind is that way.'

As they flew past her tent, the scene seemed peaceful as ever; but ere
the guy-ropes of the next were reached, a swirl of smoke and flame,
prisoned until then by the outer fly of canvas, swept straight up into
the sky in the first force of its escape; then bent silently to the
breeze. So silently!--not a roar, not a crackle--just a pyramid of fire
splitting the taut canvas into long shreds, which the wind flung in
pennants of flame on the mess-tent as those two hacked silently at the
ropes. There was no time for words; no time for thought. A quiver
came to the solid-looking pile, a shimmer in the moonlight. Another
rope--another--then a sudden sway, a crash of glass and china from
within. Down! but with a creeping trail of fire within its folds!

There was no lack of helpers by this time. Knives, hatchets were at
work right and left upon the ropes lest the message of fire should find
the tents taut. Colonel Tweedie was shouting confused orders in front.
Dan Fitzgerald, after a quick inquiry if all were safely out, was back
in the rear row, where the danger grew with delay. The din was
deafening, yet the flames made no noise; it was the dark humanity
yelling, as it capered over the big tent, treading out the curling
snakes of fire. Seen against the glare of a burning pyramid behind, the
figures showed like the demons in a mediæval Judgment beating the lost
souls down to the worm which dieth not.

Rose, standing to rest, now that abler arms were at work, felt a
hurried touch on her shoulder, and turned to see Lewis Gordon holding
out an ulster which he had fetched from his tent.

'Put it on,' he said unceremoniously, 'or you'll catch cold.'

She flushed with surprise, then, as she complied, realising for the
first time the havoc fire had made in her dress, continued to blush
with an odd feeling of resentment.

'Where is Mrs. Boynton?' she asked quickly, to cover her confusion. 'I
suppose you--I mean, she is safe, of course?'

'Of course. I haven't seen her though; but I heard your father calling
to her. She must be with him. I'll see.'

'Mrs. Boynton? God bless my soul, isn't she with Rose?' cried Colonel
Tweedie, who was still shouting excited orders to the crowd of coolies.
'She answered me and her tent is down. She must be out.'

'Mrs. Boynton! Has any one seen Mrs. Boynton?' Gordon's cry ran down
the line without response.

'Gwen!--Gwen! the fools must have cut the thing down on top of her!' He
had dashed up to the mass of ropes and canvas lying without beginning
or end, in hopeless chaos. 'Gwen! Gwen!--are you there?'

A muffled cry was audible now in the hush of the workers.

'Not stunned, that's one thing,' he muttered to himself before shouting
encouragement. Rose was at his elbow and caught his whisper.

'The sparks, for God's sake, Miss Tweedie! I trust you. If the tent
smoulders she may suffocate before we--Coming, Gwen, coming directly!'

But no obstacle against eager help was ever more successful than that
tortuous heap of heavy canvas, full of blind folds and entangled ropes,
stayed fore and aft, and still fastened beyond possibility of removal
to the bamboo-strengthened sides and the yet uncut guys. The seekers
dived into the folds again and again to find themselves meshed; while
Rose, with a sickening fear at her heart lest she should miss one,
watched the sparks and shreds drifting by in clouds settling here,
there, everywhere, and needing swift command to the little band of
helpers. 'Quick, quick!--yonder by the corner. Another there! Stamp it
out--quick! Well done!'

'What is it? what is it?' A new voice rose above the turmoil as Dan
Fitzgerald came running from the rear grasping the truth as he ran.
'No, no?' he panted. 'No use, Gordon--too long. Get to the guys, for
God's sake--the thickest--half a dozen men. Colonel, the right corner,
please, sir; Gordon, the left; Smith, round to the back. They are not
cut there, and see that the pegs hold--they _must_ hold. Miss Tweedie,
put a man to each stay as the front rises. I want the doorway--the door
_must_ show. Brothers,' he continued in Hindustani to the men who were
fast falling into place, 'we have to raise the tent again. _Remember,
the tent rises at the word!_ Gordon, are you ready? All ready?----

He paused, gave a rapid glance at the sparks, and lowered his voice.
'It has to be done sharp, Colonel, or----' Again he hesitated between
fear of letting the prisoner know her imminent danger, and fear of not
enforcing the necessity for speed. Rose understood, and racked by
anxiety as she was, felt a thrill of recognition at Dan's quick thought
which, even in such a moment, enabled him to remember that, as Mrs.
Boynton knew but little Hindustani, he could continue in that language.
'The tent is certain to catch fire, but it may be smouldering now; so
we must risk it. Remember that I _must_ get in and out before the
canvas yields, or---- So be sharp. Gordon! you give the word!'

There was an instant's silence, broken by a voice. Then a shout, a
heave, and Rose straining at a rope as she never strained before, felt,
rather than saw, something rise, pause, sink; rise again fluttering,
swaying.

'Higher! higher!' shouted Dan, standing close in, ready for a dive at
the door. 'All together, Gordon. Shâh-bâsh, brothers! My God! it's
caught already!'

A blot of shadow near her showed the coming doorway, and, half clear as
it was, she saw Dan dash into it with the cry, which was echoed from
outside as a little runnel of fire quivered up the half-stretched
canvas.

'Stand fast! stand fast!' shouted Gordon at the guy. 'Run in, half of
you, to the bamboos; they may hold longer than the stays.'

Rose was at one in a moment and clung to it, seeing nothing, thinking
of nothing, but that irregular square of shadow. When would he come
through it again? The tangles within! how would he thread them? For the
pole having slipped from its supporting pegs had slid along the ground
and would not rise more than half-way; so the inner fly-sides must be
hanging in a maze--a maze of smouldering canvas. Horrible! a burning
pall! Ah! would he never come?

Suddenly came another cry, as a great sheet of fire ran up the right
ridge and the men at the rope fell backwards under the slackened strain
of the parting canvas; yet still the corners held. But for how long!
Oh! would he never come out?

'Mr. Fitzgerald! Mr. Fitzgerald! be quick, oh please be quick.'

It was a foolish, aimless little cry, yet somehow it raised a new idea
in her mind. What if he had lost his way in that hideous tangle? She
was at the blot of shadow in an instant calling again and again. Too
late! surely too late, for the bamboo lintel to which she clung so
frantically swayed. Not down yet--yes! down, and she with it, half
kneeling still. She heard a cry from Lewis bidding the others run in on
the fire and stamp it out; but as she staggered to her feet still
holding on to the lintel something else staggered out beside her.

'All right,' gasped Dan, before the great shout of relief rose up
drowning his voice. When it had passed and they crowded about him, he
had set Gwen's feet on the ground and drawn the folds of blanket from
her face, though his arm was still round her as she clung to him,
scarcely believing in her safety.

'Only frightened--half suffocated,' he went on, struggling to get back
his breath. 'Couldn't some one bring her a glass of water--don't move
yet--they will bring it to you here. It is all over--except the
shouting.'

Rose standing aside, giddy with sudden relief, could hardly believe it
could be over. Yet the coolies were rubbing themselves and laughing
over their sprawl in the dust when the tent collapsed, and the tent
itself was blazing away unheeded on the ground. Yes! it was over, and
so quickly that George Keene, roused by the crash of the messroom-tent,
came too late for anything save sympathy. He gave that to the full; not
unnecessarily, for in truth the condition of the camp was pitiable.
Lewis Gordon's tent, being the only one to windward of the original
outbreak, was left standing; the rest were either smouldering in ashes
or severely damaged beyond the possibility of re-pitching without
repair, while the extent of other injuries must remain unknown till
dawn brought light, and time allowed the fires to die out undisturbed;
for any letting in of air while the wind remained so high might cause a
fresh blaze.

Colonel Tweedie, looking a perfect wreck in his striped flannel suit,
fussed about uncertain and querulous, while George and Dalel Beg, who
had arrived from the palace, competed for the honour of putting up the
ladies during the remainder of the night; Dalel, minus the least
vestige of European attire, being re-inforced after a time by Khush-hâl
Beg, breathless but dignified, bearing the Diwân's urgent prayer to be
allowed the honour of helping a beneficent Government in its hour of
need.

Dan with an impatient frown on his face waited for decision till his
patience failed. Then he buttoned-holed Lewis--who amid all the wild
costumes looked almost ridiculously prim in his dress suit--and
expounded his views vehemently, the result being that the Chief
concluded in favour of the palace. If, as was possible, they might be
forced into halting for several days, the old pile would hold them all,
and a regiment besides. So, after a time, odd little square dhoolies,
smelling strongly of rose-attar, came for the two ladies, and in them,
duly veiled from public gaze, they were hurried along, much to their
amusement. The gentlemen after a raid on Lewis Gordon's wardrobe,
following suit, all except the under-secretary, who, coming last, found
nothing available save a white waistcoat and a pair of jack boots, in
which additions to a pyjama sleeping-suit he looked so absurd that the
others sat and roared at him, as men will do at trifles when still
under the influence of relief and excitement, until George carried him
off to his bungalow, promising to return him next morning clothed and
in his right mind. Thus the night ended in comedy for all save Mrs.
Boynton. To her, clothes were anything but a triviality, and as she lay
among silk quilts and hard roly-poly bolsters in the little strip of a
room to which she and Rose were taken, pending the preparation of a
state suite upstairs, she mourned sincerely over the probable fate of
her wardrobe. Had it remained in the leather trunks escape might have
been possible, but, knowing they were to halt for a day at least, she
made the ayah hang up all the dresses round the tent. Poor Gwen seemed
to see them, like Bluebeard's wives in a row, getting rid of their
creases, and the thought of under-garments which might be uninjured
gave her no consolation.

Rose was more calm, remembering that her riding-habit had, as usual,
been moved in order to be brushed, and would most likely be produced
next morning. Besides, she was worn out by the excitement, and forgot
even the smart of a large scorch on her arm in the memory of that five
minutes during which she had waited for Dan to come out of the fiery
maze. Despite her boasted nerves, the stress and strain of it all came
back again and again, making her set her teeth and clench her hands.
Yet Gwen, who had so narrowly escaped a dreadful death, was grumbling
over the loss of her dresses. Rose, lying in the dark listening to the
plaintive regrets, felt scornfully superior, not knowing that her
companion was deliberately trying to forget, to ignore, a like
memory--the memory of her own feelings when Dan fought his way to her
at last. If that sort of thing went on he would end by marrying her in
spite of her wiser self; and then they would both be miserable. She was
not a romantic fool, and yet--a very real resentment rose up against
him as she remembered her own confidence, her own content. She felt
vaguely as if he had taken advantage of her fear, and that something
must be done to prevent a recurrence of this weakness on her part. If
she could only pay back the money he had paid for her, matters would be
easier to manage. As it was, even Lewis, with his easy-going estimate
of women, would not stand the knowledge of her indebtedness to another
man, so something must be done, something must be changed. That, oddly
enough, was the underlying grievance which found expression in petulant
assertions that Fate was doubly hard in making her fair; had she been
dark like Rose, the part of Eastern Princess she would have to play
until another consignment of civilised dresses arrived from Rajpore
would have been fun. As it was, she would look a perfect fright.

She did not, however. Had she not been aware of this fact ere she made
her appearance next morning in the long flowing robes and veil of a
Delhi lady, she must have gathered it from the looks of her companions.
But she had appraised herself in one of the big mirrors in the suite of
state apartments halfway up the stairs, and decided that she would wear
a similar costume at the very next fancy ball.

This in itself was sufficient to chase any save immediate care from a
mind like hers. In addition, even a stronger character would have found
it difficult to avoid falling in with the reckless merriment which had
seized on all the other actors in the past night's incident. Partly
from relief at its comic ending, partly because the charm of absolute
novelty, the zest of the unexpected, enhanced the pleasure of extremely
comfortable quarters--for Lewis in his capacity of personal _aide_ had
decided against the dark state suite of apartments on the second storey
in favour of the roof above, with its slender balconies, long arcades,
and cool central summer-house open on all sides to the air. Here, high
above the sand swirls, safe from the sun, they would be far better off
than in tents during the growing heat of the days Gwen, leaning against
a clustered marble pillar, looking down on the red-brown slant of
windowless wall spreading like a fort to the paved courtyard below,
said it was like living on a slice of wedding-cake. A solid chunk
below, above a sugar filigree; whereat George, delighted, assured her
that the whole palace itself viewed from afar had always reminded him
of the same thing. Filigree or no filigree, she said it was charming,
and the central hall of the twelve-doored summer-house was a marvel of
decoration; fast falling to decay no doubt, yet losing no beauty in the
process, since the floriated white tracery overlaying the background of
splintered looking-glass was so intricate that the eye could scarcely
follow the pattern sufficiently to appreciate a flaw. Seated there in
coolest shadow you could see through the inner arches to the long slips
of vaulted rooms on all four sides; through them again to the blue sky
set in its rim of level plain, save to the north where the view was
blocked by the Diwân's tower rising a dozen feet or more from the
terraced roof, with which it was connected by a flight of steps barred
by a locked iron _grille_. Thus the roof lay secure from all intrusion
except from the courtyard, whence an outside stair, clinging to the
bare wall, gave access to the state rooms below, and thence, still
slanting upwards, to the lowest terrace of roof. Rose, leaning over a
balcony looking sheer down to where the servants, like ants, were
running to and fro over the preparations for breakfast, declared she
would use one of the four little corner-rooms of the summer-house as
her bedroom. All it needed was a curtain at the inner arch, when it
would be infinitely preferable to those dreadful rooms downstairs all
hung with glass chandeliers and silvered balls, which made her inclined
to hang herself in sympathy. In the hopes rather, suggested Lewis, of
improving the style of the decoration; a remark which brought the
usual frown to the girl's face. In truth, Rose Tweedie in her trim
riding-habit did not suit her surroundings half so well as Gwen Boynton
in her trailing tinsel-decked robes. On the other hand, Colonel Tweedie
would have done better in not yielding to the temptation of playing
'Sultan' to Mrs. Boynton's 'Light of the Harem'; for native costume
does not suit an elderly Englishman. But the opportunity had been too
strong for him.

'My dear father,' said Rose helplessly, when she first caught sight of
her parent in a khim-khâb coat and baggy trousers. She might have said
more, had not Mrs. Boynton's grave compliment on his appearance sent
the girl away impatiently to lean over the balcony once more, and
wonder if they were ever going to bring breakfast.

To her, when he appeared, went Dan Fitzgerald, without even a look at
the others.

'Thanks, Miss Tweedie,' he said in a low tone. 'I hadn't time to say it
last night. I _had_ lost myself, and your voice---- However, it can be
only "_thank you_," and you have that.'

Rose, with a smile, let his hand linger in hers for a second as their
eyes met; honest, friendly eyes.

And George Keene also passed straight to her.

'Better! That is all right. By Jove, you were bad, when I found you
outside the fuss when it was all over. You would have fainted, if it
hadn't been for the whisky and water--which, by the way, I stole from
Gordon's flask----'

'You didn't tell him?' interrupted Rose quickly.

'Not I! I knew you wanted it kept dark about the scorch. It's better, I
hope? Why, you have curled your hair over the cut on your forehead.
What a dodge!'

His young face was overflowing with a sort of pride in her pluck, when
Mrs. Boynton came up. She was in a mood which craved attention, and
some of her slaves had passed her by to give Rose the first word.

'What are you two discussing so eagerly?' she began. 'Good-morning, Mr.
Keene. How delightfully commonplace you look in exactly the proper
breakfast costume for a young Englishman!'

George blushed. He would have given worlds to say that she looked
anything but commonplace, but was too young to venture on it. But he
looked the sentiment, and Gwen smiled bewilderingly back at him. She
was made that way, and could not help it.

'Isn't it quaint up here?' she went on, leaning over the balustrade and
looking, as Rose had been doing, at the servants filing up the steps
with silver dishes of sausages and bacon, and all the accessories of an
orthodox English breakfast, regardless of the feelings of their
pig-loathing hosts. 'I declare, I have fallen in love with everything.'

'Yourself included, I hope,' added Lewis, joining the group; or, to put
it politely, you have fallen in love with everything, and everything
has fallen in love with you. And no wonder. The fact is, Gwen, that you
do suit your present environment to perfection. I should not have
believed the thing possible--but so it is.'

As he sat on the coping with his back to the landscape, he bent forward
looking at her critically--'No!' he went on; 'I should not have thought
it possible, but you look the part.'

'It must be awful, though, to be a native,' remarked George fervently.
His eyes were on Colonel Tweedie as he spoke. That conspicuous failure
was, however, only partly responsible for his opinion. In a more or
less crude form the childish hymn of gratitude for having been born in
order to go to a public school survives wholesomely amongst young
Englishmen.

'I don't know,' dissented Gordon languidly. 'A civilised conscience is
a frightful interference with the liberty of the subject. Personally, I
object to the native views of comfort, pleasure, and all that. But I
can imagine some very good fellows preferring them. They are not nearly
such a strain on the nervous system. For instance, Gwen, were you
really the Shah-zâdi you look, there would have been no necessity for
sending back those brocades over which I found you weeping half an hour
ago. You would have appropriated them without demur. Wouldn't she,
sir?'

The Colonel gave his little preparatory cough, and looked grave.

'It wasn't a brocade, Colonel Tweedie,' protested Gwen. 'It was simply
the most lovely piece of old-gold satin in the world. It stood up of
itself, and yet was absolutely invertebrate in its folds. Perfect! The
same on both sides too. I had half a mind to be double-faced myself,
and take it when Mr. Gordon's back was turned.'

'Why didn't you?' retorted the latter cynically. 'You are the only one
of us who would not be criminally responsible for the action. Isn't
that so, sir?' He was mischievously amused by his chief's evident
dislike to the subject.

'Should I be responsible?' asked Rose, surprised.

'Your father would be, for your action. Wouldn't you, sir?'

This was too much even for reticent dignity.

'I--er--don't--I mean, doubtless; but--er--it is not--er--a subject
which comes within the range of practical politics.'

'I should hope not,' cried Rose. 'My dear dad! fancy your being
responsible for my actions. It isn't fair!' Her face of aggrieved
decision made the others laugh.

'Perhaps it isn't, Miss Tweedie,' remarked Lewis gravely; but I can
assure you that we officials are all responsible for our female
relations in the first degree. A merciful Government has, however,
drawn the line at cousins. So Mrs. Boynton could only lose her own
pension, if she were found out.'

Gwen made a _moue_ of derision.

'That is not much to risk. I wish I had known this before. Lewis! do
you think you could prevail on them to give me another chance with the
satin?'

'What on earth is delaying the breakfast?' fussed Colonel Tweedie,
moving off. He hated _persiflage_, especially between his guest and his
secretary.

'Coming, sir, coming,' said George, leaning over to look; 'there is a
regular procession of silver dishes filing up Jacob's ladder.'

'Oh dem silver dishes,' hummed Rose gaily, leaning over to look, too.
'How funny it is, isn't it?'

'Funny!' echoed Dan, 'it is simply appalling.'

Perhaps the sudden sense of the utter incongruousness of it all
accounted for the silence which followed, as they stood on the balcony,
which clung like a swallow's nest to the bare walls. Below them, beyond
the courtyard, lay the shadowy arcades of the bazaar and the great pile
of the Mori gate. Beyond that again the bricks and sand-heaps of
Hodinuggur, with the village creeping up to be crowned by the grass
palisades where the potter sat at work.

'Talking of bribes, said Dan absently, after the pause, 'I've often
wondered how a fellow feels when he has been informed that her gracious
Majesty has no further need of his services. They seldom go beyond that
nowadays, but that must be bad enough.'

'Very much so, if the bribe has been insufficient, assented Lewis,

'Mr. Gordon! how can you?' began Rose, pausing, however, at the sight
of his satisfied smile.

'You should adopt the sun with the motto "Emergo" as your crest, Miss
Tweedie. It would suit both your thoughts and deeds,' he replied
teasingly.

'Don't mind him,' put in Dan; 'he always was weak in his grammar, and
doesn't know that rise must be the correct present tense of Rose.'

'But, really,' persisted Lewis, when the laugh ended; 'if a man _had_
taken a bribe, the first thought to one of his _genre_ would naturally
be if the game was worth the candle. If he _hadn't_--why, dismissal
from the public service is not always misfortune. There is the
disgrace, of course, but, personally, I have never been able to
understand the sentiment of the thing; it appears to me strained. Half
your world, as a rule, dislikes you; it believes you capable of
murdering your grandmother at any moment. Yet the fact doesn't distress
you. It is inevitable that some people should think ill of you. So why
should you care when they invent a definite crime for you to commit? It
doesn't affect your friends.'

'Well, I don't know,' said George Keene sturdily. 'That's all very
philosophical, but I believe I should shoot myself.'

'No! you wouldn't, old chap; unless you wished people to consider you
guilty.'

'This conversation is becoming gruesome,' put in Mrs. Boynton; 'let us
change it; though Lewis is right, for Government service seems to me a
doubtful blessing----'

'But an assured income,' interrupted Dan, with a laugh.

Lewis Gordon turned on him quite hotly. 'I like your saying that,
Fitzgerald--you of all people in the world. Why, man alive! if I had
your power I would chuck tomorrow, and die contractor, engineer,
K.C.I.E.' and the richest man in India!'

Gwen Boynton looked up in quick interest. 'Really! do you mean that
_really_, Lewis?'

'I won't swear to the K.C.S.I.' or the superlative, but Fitzgerald
knows perfectly that I always say he has mistaken his line of life. We
want hacks. People to obey orders, not to give them.' As he spoke he
glanced meaningly at Colonel Tweedie walking about fussily, and then at
his friend's face.

Dan swung himself from the balustrade where he had been perched. 'Some
one must give orders, and I mean to stick on for my promotion. It must
come next year. So that is settled. Are you not coming to breakfast,
Mrs. Boynton?' She met his smile without response as she turned away.

'Dear me! the others have gone in already, and I was so hungry. But one
doesn't often get the chance, Mr. Fitzgerald, of considering an old
friend in a new character. It was quite absorbing--for the time.'

So the balcony was left to the sunlight, and some one who had been
watching it from an archway in the bazaar, withdrew to the shadow where
she rolled the little pellets of opium in her soft palms and prepared
for her midday sleep. The burning of the tents had been a real piece of
luck, the mem--that was she no doubt in the native dress--would be in
the palace for two or three days, and women were women whether fair or
dark. This one, too, looked of the right sort. Chândni's dreams that
day were of a time when she would have the upper hand in Hodinuggur and
become virtuous, for it paid to be virtuous under the present
Government. Dalel should start a women's hospital. Then the Sirkar
would give him the water every year, and the necessity for scheming
would disappear. In the meantime they must not be niggardly. That did
not pay with women, since, if they were of the sort to take bribes,
they were of the sort not easily satisfied.

                             CHAPTER VIII

'Come and see our mad potter before you go home, Miss Tweedie,' pleaded
George Keene, 'he really is one of the shows, isn't he, Fitzgerald?'

They had been doing the sights of Hodinuggur as an afternoon's
amusement; tennis in a riding-habit having no attractions for Rose.
Mrs. Boynton, however, on the plea of being a zenana lady, had elected
to remain on the roof, Colonel Tweedie keeping her company until the
time came for his return visit of state to the Diwân on his tower.
Lewis might have made the same choice had he been given it; but he was
not. So he had preferred loafing round the ruins to toiling after
problematical black buck with the sporting party, and made a pleasant
companion, as even Rose admitted; being ready with information on most
points, and between the references talking affably with Dan regarding
the respective merit of Schultze _versus_ brown powder; thus leaving
the younger couple to themselves. So his change of manner stood out
with unusual distinctness as Rose turned to him for consent to George
Keene's invitation.

'As you please, Miss Tweedie; we are your slaves. A mad potter sounds
cheerful; he is the man, I suppose, who made that jolly little pot
Keene sacrificed to my cousin's greed this morning. When you are as old
as I am, my dear fellow, you will really keep the pretty things out of
the sight of ladies. I always do, nowadays. There was a little woman at
Peshawur, I remember--she had blue eyes--who wheedled----'

'Mrs. Boynton was most welcome to the Ayôdhya pot,' blurted out George
hastily.

'_Cela va sans dire!_ It is just because we love to give the pretty
things to the pretty creatures that it becomes unwise to let the pretty
creatures see the pretty things.'

'Then it is your fault, to begin with,' interrupted Rose hotly.

'Exactly so. I'm sure, Miss Tweedie, you have heard me say a dozen
times that we men are to blame for all the weaknesses of women. They
are simply the outcome of our likes and dislikes; and they will remain
so until there is a perpetual leap-year.'

'For heaven's sake, Keene,' said Dan, laughing, 'lead the way to the
potter's or there will be murder done on the King's Highway! Don't mind
him, Miss Rose! He "only says it to annoy because he knows it teases."
He doesn't really believe anything of the kind.'

Lewis, his eye-glass more aggressive than ever, murmured something
under his breath about the inevitable courses of nature, as Rose, with
her head held very high, followed George Keene into the potter's yard.

It was a scene strangely at variance with the party entering it.
Indeed, old Fuzl Elâhi, who had never before set eyes on an
Englishwoman, would have started from his work had not George detained
him with reassuring words:

'He tells his yarns best when he is at the wheel,' he explained as he
dragged forward a low string stool for Rose. 'And I want you to hear an
awfully queer one called "The Wrestlers." You know enough of the
language to understand him at any rate.'

'Miss Tweedie is a better scholar than most of us,' remarked Lewis
Gordon curtly from the seat he had found beside Dan on a great log of
wood; one of those logs so often to be seen in such courtyards--relics,
perhaps, of some ineffectual intention of repair long since forgotten.
This one might, to all appearance, have fallen where it lay in those
bygone days of which the potter told tales, when the now treeless
desert had been a swampy jungle on the borders of an inland sea.

The afternoon sun, slanting over the grass palisades, played havoc with
the humanity it found gathered round the wheel by sending their shadows
distorted to long lengths across the yard, and tilting them at odd
angles against the irregular wall of the mud hut beyond. Altogether a
conglomerate pyramid of shadows, with the potter's high turban
dominating it as he sat silent, spinning his wheel. And as the clay
curved and hollowed beneath his moulding hand a puzzled look came to
the light eyes, which, usually so shifty, were now fixed with a sort of
fascination upon that strange figure in the riding-habit.

'It is not there,' he muttered uneasily, 'I cannot find a clew.'

George gave Rose the triumphant glance of a child displaying a
mechanical toy when it behaves as it ought to behave. The potter was
evidently in a mad mood, and might be trusted for a good performance.

'Now, Fuzl Elâhi, we want "The Wrestlers," please. The Miss sahiba has
never heard it.'

'How could she?' broke in the old man sharply. 'She does not belong to
that old time. She is new. I cannot even tell the old tale if she sits
there in the listener's place. I shall forget, the old will be lost in
the new; as it is ever.'

'Change places with me, Miss Tweedie,' put in Lewis with a bored look.
'I am not regenerate out of the old Adam, am I, potter-ji?'

But as he rose the pliant hand went out in a gesture of denial. 'There
is room on the log for both, and crows roost with crows, pigeons with
pigeons. The big Huzoor can sit on the stool if he likes. I know him. I
have seen him many and many a time.'

'Only once, potter-ji,' protested Dan, as he and Rose changed places
and the wheel began to hum.

'The post is going from Logborough junction to St. Potter's burgh,'
murmured Lewis discontentedly. 'If we are going to play round games I
shall go home.'

'Do be quiet, Gordon!' put in George eagerly; 'he is just beginning,
and it really is worth hearing.

But Lewis was incorrigible. '_Proxime accessit_,' he went on, to Rose,
'what crime in your past incarnation is responsible for your being
bracketed with me in this?'

'Oh, do listen,' protested George again.

'Listen! Who could help listening to that infernal noise?--I beg your
pardon, Miss Tweedie, but it is infernal.'

It was startling, certainly. A shrill moan coming from the racing,
rocking, galloping wheel as the worker's body swayed to and fro like a
pendulum. It seemed to rouse a vague sense of unrest in the hearers, a
dim discomfort like the remembrance of past pain. Then suddenly the
story began in a high-pitched persistent voice, round which that
racing, galloping rush of the wheel seemed to circle, hurrying it,
pushing at it, every now and again sweeping it along recklessly.

      'It was a woman seeking something,
       _Over hill and dale, through night and day, she sought for
         something_.

       The wrestlers who own the world wrestled for her,
       On the palm of her right hand wrestling for her,
       "She is mine, she is mine," said one and the other,
       _While over hill and dale, through night and day, she sought
         for something_.

       "O flies? you tickle the palm of my hand,
       Be off and wrestle down in your world."
       So they brought flowers and grass as a carpet,
       Wrestling on as she sought for something--
       _Over hill and dale, through night and day, seeking for
         something_.

       "Your carpet is hot, be off, you flies."
       So they brought her trees and water for cooling,
       Wrestling on as she sought for something--
       _Over hill and dale, through night and day, seeking for
         something_.

       "The grass grows long with the water," she cried,
       "Be off, O flies, and tickle your world."
       So they brought her flocks to devour the grass,
       Wrestling on as she sought for something--
       _Over hill and dale, through day and night, seeking for
         something_.

       "They have trodden my palm as hard as a cake."
       So they caught up a plough and ploughed her hand,
       Wrestling on while she sought for something--
       _Over hill and dale, through day and night, seeking for
        something_.

       "You have furrowed my palm; it tickles and smarts."
       So they brought a weaver and wove her lint,
       Wrestling on while she sought for something--
       _Over hill and dale, through night and day, seeking for
         something_.

       "Foul play! Foul play! Look down and decide,"
       "Not I, poor flies, I must search for something."
       So they caught up a town to watch the game.
       "He is right! He is wrong!" cried old and young.
       "He is wrong! He is right!" And so war began.
       While they wrestled away and she sought for something,
       _Over hill and dale, through night and day, seeking for
         something_.

       "What a noise you make; I am tired of flies."
       So she swept them into a melon rind.
       "Be quiet, flies! lie still in the dark."
       She clapped her palm to the hole in the rind.
       "I'm tired of it all, I will go to sleep;
       When morning comes I will seek for something--
       _Over hill and dale, through night and day, I must seek for
         something_".

       She rested her head on her palm, and slept,
       Down in the valley close to the river;
       Slept to the tune of the buzzing flies,
       Wrestling and fighting about fair play.
       And while she slept the big Flood came,
       And the melon pillow floated away.

       And all within swarmed out to the sun--
       Grass, and herds, and ploughs, and looms.
       People fighting for none knows what.
       "I have made a new world," she said, with a laugh.
       "A brand-new world; and the flies have gone.
       But the palm of my right hand tickles still,
       May be it will cool when I find what I seek."
       So she left her new world down by the river,
       Left it alone and sought for something--
       _Over hill and dale, through night and day, seeking for
         something_.'

The galloping wheel, which had responded always to the mad hurry of the
recurring refrain, slackened slowly. Rose gave a sigh of relief, and
glanced at Lewis Gordon to see if he too had been oppressed by that
shrinking recognition of a stress, a strain, a desire, such as she had
never felt before; but he was leaning forward, his chin on his curved
hand, intent on listening, so she could not see his face.

'By the powers,' came Dan Fitzgerald's voice above the softening hum,
'the old chap has made an Ayôdhya pot--the same shape, I mean.'

'He always does when he tells this story,' broke in George, quite
pleased with the success of his entertainment. 'I don't think he quite
knows why he does it, however. Sometimes he says the woman was looking
for one; sometimes that she always carries one in her left hand to
balance the world in her right. But he always takes the unbaked pot to
the ruins and buries it with two of those odd little ninepins, he calls
men and women, inside it. He is as mad as a hatter, you know.'

'Several hatters,' assented Gordon fervently, 'but it is an interesting
theory of creation.'

'Now don't,' protested Dan, sitting with his long legs crunched up on
the low stool close to the potter. 'It is too human for dissection
by the Folklore Society. But I'm surprised at one thing. The
wrestlers--they are persistent figures in Indian tales, Miss
Tweedie--are generally represented as giants. They are pigmies here.'

'The Huzoor is right and wrong,' replied the potter in answer to an
inquiry; 'the pâilwans were neither pigmies nor giants. They were as
the Huzoor--two and a half hâths round the chest--neither more nor
less.'

'That's a good shot,' remarked Dan in English, 'forty-five inches
according to my tailor. You have an accurate eye, potter-ji,' he added
in Hindustani, 'only half an inch out.'

'Not a hair's-breadth, Huzoor,' replied the old man mildly. 'The
measures of the pailwâns is the measure of the Huzoor. I have it here;
my fathers used it, and I use it.'

He sought a moment in the little niche, hollowed, close to his right
hand, out of the hard soil forming the side of his sunken seat, and
drew from it a fine twisted cord of brown, red, and cream coloured
wool. It was divided into measures by small shells strung on the twist
and knotted into their places.

'Hullo!' cried Gordon eagerly, 'that must be hundreds of years old.
Those are sea-shells, and very rare. Simpson at the museum showed me
one in fossil the other day. I wonder how the dickens the old man got
hold of them?'

'Two and a half hâths,' repeated Fuzl Elâhi absently, 'the potter's
full measure for a man in the beginning and the end.' He leaned forward
rapidly as he spoke, passed the cord round Dan Fitzgerald's chest, and
drew the ends together. The curled spirals of the two shells lay half
an inch apart. 'So much for the garments,' he muttered. 'Yea! I knew
it. The measure of a true pâilwan to a hair's breadth.

'And what am I, potter-ji?' asked George, laughing.

The puzzled look came back to the old man's face. 'The Huzoor may be a
pâilwan too. Times have changed.'

'Rough on a fellow, rather!' exclaimed the boy, still laughing. 'Here,
Fitz! chuck me over the thing. Is that fair, Miss Tweedie?'

She laughed back into his bright face, as he pulled his hardest to make
the two second shells meet, then shook her head.

'Not on yourself, Mr. Keene. You are more of a hero than that, I should
say.'

The potter's eyes were on her, then back on George. 'Everything is
changed,' he muttered again, 'even the measure of the pots.'

'Then you measure them, do you?' asked Gordon, to whom George had
handed the cord, and who was now examining it minutely.

'Surely, Huzoor. The first one of each batch. Then the hand learns the
make.'

'Try what make you are, Gordon?' suggested Dan.

'Not I. Here, potter-ji, catch. Miss Tweedie and I, according to the
best authority, are abnormal; we are not ordinary pots, so I, for one,
decline to be measured by their standard. And now, if some of us are to
be in time for such trivialities as dinner, we ought to be going.'

The potter rose also and stepped out of his hole. Seen thus at full
length, he showed insignificant, his hairy, bandy, almost beast-like
legs, contrasting strangely with the mild high-featured face, with its
expression of puzzled anxiety, as he laid a deprecating hand on George
Keene's sleeve.

'Wants bucksheesh, I suppose,' murmured Lewis. 'I have some rupees
somewhere, if you want them, Keene.' But it was not money; it was only
leave to speak to the 'mâdr mihrbân.'

'That's a nice name for you, Miss Rose,' said Dan softly--'Mother of
mercy--a name to be glad of.'

She blushed as she went forward a step, asking, 'What is it? what can I
do for you?'

He stooped to touch her feet with his supple hands ere replying.
'Huzoor! it is a little thing. Fuzl Elâhi, potter of Hodinuggur, has a
daughter somewhere. Perhaps she has gone to the Huzoor's world; it is
new, I do not know it. If the "mâdr mihrbân" were to see her, she might
tell her to come back--just once--only once. I would not keep her. But
now I have no answer when my father says: "Where is thy little
Azîzan?"'

'Azîzan!' echoed George quickly. But the old man seemed almost to have
forgotten his own request. He stood looking past the strangers, past
the village, past even the ruins, into the sunset sky.

'I will send her--if I see her,' said Rose gently, with tears in her
eyes; for George had told her the story of the lost daughter, and the
sudden, diffident appeal touched her. Yet the vast gulf between her and
the old man touched and oppressed her still more, as she left him
standing alone beside his wheel.

'Well!' said Lewis Gordon, when in silence they had reached the road
again. 'You may call that amusement, Keene, if you like; I don't. When
I get home, I shall have a sherry and bitters.'

'He _is_ rather a gruesome old chap,' admitted George cheerfully. 'I
felt a bit creepy myself the first time I heard that song--by the way,
Miss Tweedie, talking of creepiness, did I tell you about the Potter's
Thumb? I didn't! Oh,--that is really a grand tale.' He told it,
happily, as an excellent sequel to the show, while Dan, in one of his
best moods, piled on the imaginative agony about Hodinuggur generally,
until Lewis announced his intention of returning to the palace by the
longer way. He would be late, of course, but that was preferable to
having no appetite for dinner!

'By Jove! seven o'clock,' cried Dan, looking at his watch. 'And you and
I, George, have to get over to the bungalow. We must run for it.'

Rose watched them racing down the path, laughing and talking as they
ran, with a troubled look.

'Fine specimens, Miss Tweedie,' remarked Lewis after a pause. 'I don't
think you need fear their cracking in the fire.'

'I--I--' faltered Rose, taken aback by his comprehension.

'Am Scotch! That's sufficient excuse. I notice we seldom get rid of our
native superstition. Besides, it _was_ uncanny--the yard-measure and
the Potter's Thumb, and that horse-leech of a woman, who was never
satisfied. I felt it myself.'

She knew he was speaking down to her as a nervous woman; yet she did
not resent it, because it was a distinct relief not to be taken
seriously.

'I wish they had not been measured, for all that,' she persisted. 'You
will own it was odd, won't you?'

'Not so odd as Dan himself! He has been cracked ever since I knew him.
And Keene is one of the sterling sort, certain of success; besides, he
measured himself! Now, before you go upstairs to dress, if your Scotch
blood is still curdling, as mine is, have a half of sherry and bitters
with me. Crows roost with crows, you remember.'

His friendliness beguiled her into playfulness.

'Crows indeed! then I've a better opinion of you than you have of me. I
thought we were meant for the pigeons.'

'To bill and coo?'

If she could have boxed his ears, it would have relieved her feelings.
As it was, she raced upstairs, in a fury, without vouchsafing one word
of resentment, and paced up and down her tiny room with flaming cheeks.
Could a girl be expected, for ever and aye, to be on the outlook for
such openings? Of course Gwen Boynton would have laughed easily--would
not have minded, perhaps; but then Gwen was charming--everything
apparently that a woman ought to be!

Rose looked at herself in her dusty habit. She would have to go down to
dinner in it, and challenge comparisons with Gwen in her silks and
tinsel. Why should she? No one would care, no one would have a right to
care if she did stay in her room with a headache. The next instant she
was ashamed of the impulse. What did it matter?--they were welcome to
their opinion. As for her, she would adopt no feminine excuse; she
would leave those little devices to men's women. So she brushed her
habit, and went out, with a heightened colour, to join the others.

                              CHAPTER IX

Rose Tweedie's sneer against men's women lacked point, since it so
happened that Mrs. Boynton, in the opposite corner-room of the
pavilion, was, at the very moment, setting aside the temptation of
pleading a headache as an excuse for not appearing at dinner. And she
had more reason to seek quiet than the girl, though a new dress lay
ready on the bed; for Gwen loved to dazzle her world, and had spent
some of her leisure in instructing a native tailor how to run up a web
of coarse native muslin bought in the bazaar into a very decent
semblance of a fashionable garment. But the pleasure of the trick had
gone out of it. Something had happened. Something incredible, yet,
given the surroundings, natural enough. Something about which she must
make up her mind. It seemed scarcely a minute ago since she had passed
in swiftly to the solitude of her room in order to think. She, Gwen
Boynton, in native dress, with a white scared face and something in her
hand. Now she had to pass out of that room again as an Englishwoman,
and the transition left her oddly undecided. Indeed, as she paused for
a moment ere taking the plunge, with one hand on the embroidered
draperies doing duty as a door, it seemed almost as if she were
awaiting some command, some voice which would relieve her of
responsibility. Then she smiled and passed on to meet the surprised
admiration of her little world; for she had never looked better in her
life, and she knew it. The creamy muslin suited her in its careless
folds, her excitement showed itself becomingly in flushed cheeks and
bright eyes, and the chorus of wonder at her cleverness made her
gracious beyond compare. They had been away so long, she said, airily,
that she had had to amuse herself somehow, and were there not miles of
muslin to be bought in every bazaar, and many men to put stitches into
it? Any one could have done it. Rose, listening with a certain contempt
in her look, told herself that Gwen said truth; any one could have done
it who thought it worth while to take so much trouble for the sake of
personal effect; yet a regret rankled somewhere, mingling with the
resentment which came as Gwen called attention, somewhat garishly, to
more of her good works. Did they not admire the room? When Colonel
Tweedie had gone off to the Diwân she had consoled herself by pulling
about the furniture; and did not the Ayôdhya pot look sweet on the
corner-stand she had improvised out of three bamboos, a brass platter,
and a yellow silk scarf?

'You should have packed it away in your box at once,' remarked Lewis
coolly. 'Keene may repent his good-nature, or some of us may steal it.
The colour is admirable.' As he spoke he walked over to the stand as if
for closer examination.

'Don't touch it, please,' cried Mrs. Boynton hastily. 'You--you will
spoil my draperies.'

'A thousand pities, when they are so artistic,' put in Colonel Tweedie,
glad of the opportunity. 'That is dinner, Mrs. Boynton. I've had it
laid in the small pavilion so as to keep this as your drawing-room.'

'Thanks! but everything is delightful; simply fascinating! In spite of
what Mr. Keene said this morning, I begin to wish I were a native.'

'For the sake of the satin?' asked Lewis, who was following close
behind with Rose. Gwen flashed back a brilliant look at him.

'No! not the satin. That game would not be worth the candle.'

Apart from the question of satin, Mrs. Boynton had excuse for admiring
the _mise en scène_. The violet sky, spangled with stars, seemed made
apparently but for one end--to hap and hold that terraced roof which
was clearly outlined against it by the light streaming from the
pavilions on to the fretted white marble balustrades. At the corners
were shadowy cupolas, and there in the arched summer-house at the
farther end, close upon the velvet darkness, was a table set with
silver and glass, fruits and flowers. At one side, so as to divide the
ladies equally, was Rose, in her habit, doing the duty of hostess with
a little air of gravity and preoccupation; at the other, Gwen, in her
soft clouds of muslin, keeping the men in a state of admiring
gratification through their eyes and their ears. They gathered round
her too, when, dinner being over, they adjourned to the balconies for
coffee and cigars. It was deliciously cool; a faint breeze stirred
Rose's hair as she sat a little apart from the others watching the
twinkling lights go up and down the stair which formed the only tie
between that world on the roof and that world in the courtyard below.

'We ought to go to bed early,' said Lewis, Coming to stand before her.
'You are half-asleep--no wonder, after last night!--and Gwen is what
superstitious Scotch folk call "fey." Then, if we have to join that
detestable hawking-party to-morrow morning, we shall have to get up at
five.'

'You needn't go unless you like,' she replied curtly. 'Mrs. Boynton has
cried off.'

'I am not Mrs. Boynton's personal assistant, Miss Tweedie; I happen to
be your father's--so duty calls.' As he spoke he seated himself on the
balustrade and leant forward, his elbows on his knees, to watch the
group on the other side of the arcade.

'If I didn't know that Gwen despises that sort of thing,' he went on in
dissatisfied tones, 'I should say she had rouged this evening. Her way
of showing fatigue, I presume; though, of course, neither of you have
the common-sense to confess you are tired. Women are all ascetics at
heart; at least they believe in the virtue of martyrdom. They have
different ways of showing it, that's all. Gwen spends her fatigue in
dress-making and conversation to please, and you, I'll go bail, haven't
even a proper bandage on that scorched arm----'

'Mr. Gordon!'

'Yes! I saw you imagined I was blind--suppose we say like to imagine
it; but I really had my eye-glass, Miss Tweedie. Besides, it doesn't
require microscopic sight to see some things.'

'What a profound remark!' interrupted Rose, to hide her pleased
surprise at his unusual consideration. At the same moment Gwen's gay
laugh rang out, soft yet clear. Either the sound or the speech annoyed
the hearer on the balustrade, for he frowned as he slipped his dangling
feet to the floor.

'As profound as I can make it this evening, for I'm not ashamed to
confess myself dog-tired. Couldn't tell a crow from a pigeon; so I
shall be off. Good-night, Miss Tweedie, I wish you would persuade Gwen
to go to bed. It is easier to give good advice than to take it.'

Rose remained looking at the twinkling lights, and wondering if Lewis
were really jealous of his cousin, till seeing the others go back to
the central summer-house she followed suit.

'Tired!' echoed Gwen sharply, in reply to her information that Lewis
Gordon had stolen away. 'Are we not all tired? I feel as if I had been
up since the beginning of time seeking for something I could not find.
My bed, perhaps. Good-night, Rose.'

They were an odd couple, as they bent to kiss each other in that
mirrored room, where the oddness was reflected again and again in the
myriad scraps of looking-glass on the walls. Each curved fragment
giving and taking an eternity of Gwen's and Rose's bending to kiss each
other.

   'I am tired of it all, I will go to sleep;
    When morning comes I will seek for something,
    _Over hill and dale, through night and day, I must seek for
      something_.'

The remembrance evoked by Gwen's chance words sent a little shiver
through the girl; and with it came a sudden pulse of sympathy for the
woman who, now that she saw her close, did indeed look haggard and
worn.

'No wonder you are tired,' she said gently. 'Even I feel as if I could
sleep for days.'

'But you are coming to hawk surely,' broke in George. 'Do, please! it
won't be any fun without you.'

'Not a bit,' assented Dan. 'Gordon ordered your horse, I know, and told
them to take you your tea at five punctually.'

'You must go, Rose,' put in Gwen with a shrug of her white shoulders.
'Diana _Chasseresse_ mustn't disappoint her votaries. I'm glad my habit
was burnt.'

She did not look it, and Rose, as she went off to her corner room
wondered if Gwen could be jealous of her. The idea was absurd, but
pleasing; and she fell asleep placidly over variations of the
possibility.

But just over the way with that dark mirrored room between them, Gwen
lay awake, with one hand thrust under the pillow where she could feel a
tiny paper parcel. Should she keep it, or should she not? Should she
say anything of the scene burnt in on her memory, or should she not?
She seemed to see it as a spectator, not as the only actor in it. To
see a woman in native dress in that room set round with eyes; the
Ayôdhya pot in her hand, and in her tinsel-edged veil the jewels which
had fallen from its false bottom. Jewels which if sold would buy her
freedom, perhaps save her, and Dan too, from a great mistake. It was a
chance. A chance most likely unknown to any one in the wide world save
herself, for who would have knowingly sold a pot containing three huge
pearls and an emerald for ten rupees? Nor was she bound to give more to
the seller. Land was bought so, but if the mines were found afterwards,
that was the buyer's good luck, even if he had guessed. Facts like
these, accepted apparently by the honest and honourable, go far to give
such as Gwen immoral support. No one could possibly know; she herself
would not have known save for that chance slip, and the eyes made keen
and eager through fear of some slight injury to the treasure.

It was a chance of escape from the danger which had come home to her
sharply in the past twenty-four hours. The danger of yielding to her
own weakness about Dan made clear by his actions; the new danger,
suggested by his words, of her losing her hold on Lewis. Could the
latter really be attracted by Rose? The events of the evening gave
colour to the possibility. If so, there was no time to be lost. She
must be free; free to do as she chose. No one would know. Nobody
would dream of bribing one so powerless as she. And if the jewels had
been put there knowingly, it was only her risk. No one else was
responsible--Lewis had said so----

So she argued, coming round always to the same thought, till the first
glint of dawn brought sleep, as it so often does to weary eyes. Perhaps
in the thought that the sun will rise, the world go on, no matter what
we do, or think, or say.

She slept so soundly that all the bustle of the hawking party failed to
disturb her; and when that was over the long stretch of terraced roof
lay empty of all sound or sign of life, save for the green parrots
shrieking and swooping about the carven work. A pair of them had built
in a loophole, whence the young ones kept up a simmering, bubbling
noise, like a boiling tea-kettle; a comfortable homely sound out of
keeping with the bare beauty of stone, and sunlight, and hard blue sky.

Down in the courtyard below, two badge wearers in scarlet and gold
lounged on the stairs, barring the roof from intrusion, chatting to the
passers-by, and discussing the news which had just been brought in by
the camel which was crouching beside a pile of fodder in the centre of
the yard, while its owner stretched his limbs, cramped with riding all
night across the desert, in front of the cook-room. Halfway up the
stairs on the landing leading to the state-rooms, Mrs. Boynton's ayah
squatted, combining business with pleasure, by being within reach of a
call and her forbidden hookah, at one and the same time. A bundle of
letters lay beside her, intended as a peace-offering against the
possible smell of smoke.

The sun climbed up silently, shifting the shadows on the silent roof.
That was the only movement, until suddenly a figure in a white domino
peered through the _grille_ which barred the flight of steps leading to
the Diwân's tower. Then came the grate of a rusty key in a lock, and
the figure flitted, silently as the shadows, to the summer-house, and
paused in the mirror-room. Perhaps the transformation which Western
taste and Mrs. Boynton's clever fingers had wrought in its adornment,
was pleasing, perhaps the reverse. The _burka_, however, is of all
disguises the most complete, since it blots out form, colour,
expression, even movement. The figure showed indeed like a white
extinguisher in the centre of the room, until, with a swaying of ample
folds it glided over to the corner stand where the Ayôdhya pot stood
out from Gwen's artistic drapery. Then something slid out, still
shrouded in white folds, from the extinguisher, raised the vase, shook
it slightly, replaced it, and slid back again in a horrible
invertebrate protoplasmic sort of movement, calculated to send a shiver
through a spectator. But there was none. The thing had the whole roof
to itself save for that fair-haired sleeper in the corner room who lay
with one hand clasping a little packet hidden under her pillow. Her
face was turned to the doorway in full view of those latticed eye-holes
belonging to the _burka_, which after a time came to look in on her
from the half-raised curtain, and let in with a shaft of sunshine, a
vista of blue skies and marble balustrades with two red and green
parrots pecking at each other. It may have been the light, more
probably the disturbing effect the dim consciousness of other eyes
fixed on our own has upon most people, which roused Gwen Boynton. But
she opened hers suddenly and started up in bed, her heart throbbing
violently, though the curtain had fallen and not a sound was to be
heard.

'Comin', mem sahiba, comin',' came in immediate answer to her
imperative call as the ayah, thrusting her hookah aside, snatched at
the letters, and shook what smoke she could from her voluminous
garments. A trifling delay, but enough to allow the thing up-stairs to
flit round the summerhouse again; even to pause a second at the
_grille_.

'It makes too much noise. I will leave it open,' it muttered as it
disappeared up the steps with the rusty key held in its formless clasp.

'Where were you?' asked Gwen, her heart still throbbing. 'And who was
that who looked in on me from the door? There was some one: I'm sure
there was some one.'

'Me, mem sahiba,' grinned the woman readily. 'Me, ayah. Look in several
time. Mem always neendi par; sota! sota! like baba.[2] Ayah waitin'
close to bring dâk. Many letters for mem sahiba.'

Mrs. Boynton looked at her doubtfully. It was not the ayah whom she had
seen; of that she felt certain. On the other hand, if the woman really
had been sitting outside it was more than probable the whole thing was
a dream. No harm had come of it, anyhow; so five minutes after she was
dividing her attention between early tea and a long epistle from an
absent admirer. Gwen's victims were always excellent correspondents,
perhaps because of that gracious indifference in which lay her great
charm, since a letter had quite as good a chance as a man of whiling
away her kindly, sympathetic leisure.

But when the ayah was brushing at the pretty hair Gwen's mind reverted
to the question which had kept her awake. As so often happens--the
learned say by unconscious cerebration--it appeared to have settled
itself. Independently of Dan, or any secondary matter of that sort,
money would be useful. Most useful, seeing she had just lost the best
part of her wardrobe and had a season at Simla in immediate prospect.
Now she came to think of it, Hodinuggur owed her some reparation for
the loss it had inflicted upon her. Besides, it would be wiser to wait
and see if the presence of jewels in the pot were suspected by any one
or not. If the latter, it would clearly be flying in the face of a good
Providence to mention her discovery. So, by the time she was ready to
face her world, that world seemed quite simple and easy to face.

Chândni thought the same thing as she sat at the Diwân's feet in the
big balconied room of the tower overlooking the canal, telling him in
whispers of the success of her plan so far. The jewels were no longer
in the pot. The mem must have them, for, as she had found out through a
khitmutgâr, the mem had been alone during many hours, and had been
making a mess in the room with trumpery platters and pots.

'She may send it back yet,' said the Diwân cautiously. 'Lo! I am old,
and this I have learnt through long years: Trust not a woman not to
change her mind till she be dead.'

The courtesan laughed. ''Tis as well for some men she is born so,
father. But a night's thought is as death to a woman. Life is too short
to give more to such things. And that night is over without a sign.
Give her yet one more, an thou wilt; after that, say that Chândni hath
dug the channel. 'Twill be thy task to turn the water into it.

                              CHAPTER X

Among those things which come by Nature and are not to be taught, may
be reckoned a pretty seat on horseback. One may be a good rider without
it, a poor one with it; but when grace and skill are combined a man
certainly shows at his best on horseback. It was so with Lewis Gordon.
He sat his lean little country-bred as if it belonged to him; not as
the usual phrase runs, as if he were part of his horse. For that is a
description which ignores the essence of the thing to be described;
which is, surely, the mastery a man has over something which is _not_
himself. Part of his horse! The very words conjure up a man paralysed
to the waist and jelly above, agonising over a cavalry seat.

If Lewis Gordon were grateful to Providence for anything, it was for
making and keeping him a light weight, and thus rendering him
independent of Australian or Arab mounts. The fourteen-hand pony which
he had picked up--a mere bag of bones--at a native fair, had to be hard
held when trotting alongside of Colonel Tweedie's big Waler, yet she
had only cost him a tenth of the price. As she forged along, quivering
with impatience, Bronzewing was a pretty sight, the sunlight shining
red through her wide nostrils, and shifting in golden curves over the
bronze muscles which were almost black in shadow. Rose Tweedie always
admired it immensely, and, illogically enough, felt inclined to be more
lenient on the rider. She told herself it was because he wore
spectacles on horseback, and they were less offensive than the
eyeglass, which permitted variations of method in his outlook. She did
not even fall foul of his indifference when he dawdled about, a picture
of aimless dejection, at the hawking party; in fact, she had a sneaking
sympathy with his feelings. It was dreary work watching unfortunate
grey partridges beaten up from one bush by coolies, only to be pounced
on by a hawk ere it could reach the shelter of the next cover. She also
shared his disgust at Dalel Beg, who, in top-boots, red coat, and
doe-skins, took a keen interest in the gorging of young hawks on the
entrails of the still struggling victims, and gave shrill 'yoicks' and
'gone a ways' at each fresh flutter. Khush-hâl Beg watching the sport
from a bullock-cart on which he reclined among cushions was purely
comical; his son purely offensive.

'I think,' remarked Lewis slowly, 'he is the worst specimen of
civilisation I ever met; and I think this is the deadliest
entertainment I ever was at. And both those facts mean something.'

Rose laughed, and suggested that it would have been different had they
come across bustard. They, she had heard, were worth hawking. Her
companion shook his head.

'I've seen it on the frontier at its best. You lose the essence of
sport; that, I take it, lies in pitting your strength, or skill, or
endurance against the quarry. In hawking you ride behind the skill; and
as the country is easy, the whole thing resolves itself into the pace
of your horse; in other words, what you paid for the beast.'

'Not always! I'd back Bronzewing against the field any day,' cried Rose
impulsively.

He looked up with quite a flush of pleasure. 'Well! she should do her
best to win the gloves for you, Miss Tweedie.'

The reply came as naturally as the remark which provoked it, but it
made the girl feel suddenly shy and say hastily--

'She looks as if she wanted to be off now; how that partridge startled
her!'

'Not a bit of it. She is only longing, as I am, for a hunt.'

'A hunt?'

'Yes! a partridge-hunt. Have you never seen one?' He gave a rapid
glance round. 'There are too many bushes here, but Keene may know of
some fairly-open country, with perhaps a thorn-hedge or two for you to
jump--that is to say, if you have had enough of this festive scene.'

Five minutes after, George Keene, Dan Fitzgerald, Lewis Gordon, and she
were sweeping along in line across low sand-hills in order to dip down
into a harder plain among stretches of level, dotted sparsely with low
caper-bushes, with here and there a patch of cultivation showing
vividly green against its whitey-brown frame of desert, and here and
there a bit of plough ready for the summer crop.

There is nothing more invigorating in the world than riding in line at
a hand-gallop across such country in the freshness of early morning,
especially when the party has gay hearts and light heads. Rose felt
that it was worth all her purely feminine amusements put together, and,
with a flush of enjoyment on her face, besieged Lewis Gordon with
high-pitched questions as to what they were going to do; he calling
back his answers, so that their voices rose above the rhythmical
beating of the horses' hoofs.

'We are going without dog or coolie, gun or any lethal weapon
whatever--as the code says--to ride down and capture the grey partridge
or _Ammoperdix bonhami_! Have you seen it done, Fitzgerald?'

'Heard of it only. The pace must be good.'

'Racing speed; no less. Therein lies the fun.' He gave a quick glance
at Rose's tackle, and frowned. 'You should have a stronger bit,' he
began when she interrupted him.

'It is the same as yours.'

'Perhaps. But a lady can't ride like a man, especially in this sort of
work. If I had noticed it before, I----'

'Nonsense! I always ride with a snaffle, and Shâhâd is as steady as a
house.'

'That is no argument. In my opinion a lady should----'

The rest of the wrangle was spared to the company, for at that moment a
partridge buzzed out of a bush at their feet, Bronzewing's equanimity
gave way, and with a snort of eagerness she burst after it, Shâhzâd
following suit; both beasts heading straight as a die after the quarry,
heedless of their riders or their discussions.

'Give him his head, Miss Tweedie,' shouted Lewis, as he shot past. 'He
has done it before and knows the game! Off we are!'

Off indeed, helter-skelter, behind the grey-brown buzz of wings showing
against a blue sky.

'Ride it! Ride it! Keep an eye on it! I'll do back,' came Lewis
Gordon's voice, boyishly excited, as, with hands down, he veered the
mare a point or two by main force, until, as she caught sight of a
heavier' clump of bushes comprehension came to the game little beast,
and she headed straight for it.

'Where? Oh! Where?' cried Rose distractedly to Dan Fitzgerald, who was
now racing beside her.

'Right ahead--there--don't you see?'

Just a brown speck against the blue sky still, but skimming faster and
faster to meet the brown horizon. There still, no--yes--

_Gone!_

Rose gave a cry, which was echoed by an exclamation from Dan, as
instinctively they reined up, feeling the chase was over. George,
hurrying up from behind, where his pony had been playing the fool,
found them staring disconsolately at the bushes.

'Lost it, I suppose,' said Lewis, as he rejoined them. 'It is always
difficult to keep it in sight on the horizon. However, you have had a
good burst, Miss Tweedie. See! we started there--a good mile back. Have
you any idea how you got here?'

'None! I suppose I rode; but I saw nothing but a sort of big bumble-bee
buzzing in front of me. Shâhzâd did the rest.'

'As I said, not for the first time, which confirms me in saying he is
only a Gulf Arab, for partridge-hunting is a Persian sport. Only don't
tell your father, please; he would never forgive me.'

As he turned in his saddle, resting one hand on the mare's quarters in
order to speak to Rose, voice and face full of almost boyish enjoyment,
the girl felt that this was a new development of his character, and
that she liked it better than the old ones.

'Now, as we go along, I'll explain. That bird took us by surprise,' he
went on eagerly. 'Four is an ideal number, though I've had rare fun
riding partridge single-handed. Number one ought to make the pace,
keeping both eyes on the bird. Number two keeps his on the going, so as
to save Number one from coming to grief over rough country. Number
three rides cautious, landmarks the flight, and is ready to turn if the
bird breaks back--you can't when you are going full speed, unless the
bird towers. Number four rides cunning, cuts off curves, and heads for
likely covers. The whole aim being to press the partridge so hard that
it has no time to settle in shelter, but, after skimming down to a
bush, runs through it, and takes to wing again on the other side.'

'And gets away, I suppose,' muttered, George Keene, still out of
temper. 'Don't see the fun of it.'

'Wait a bit,' retorted Lewis gaily. 'Now you must remember that the
_rôle_ you have to play depends on how the bird breaks. There is no
time to settle. The nearest in must ride it, the rest choose their
parts as best--steady, mare, steady!'

It was only a faint '_te-tetar--te-tetar_,' in the far distance, but
Bronzewing started, and even George's pony cocked its ears; while
humanity went on breathlessly in line, the horses' feet at a walk
giving out a hollow sound on the hard soil, the yellow sunshine casting
hard shadows.

'Look out!' cautioned Lewis, in a whisper. 'There's a partridge running
on ahead; by you, I think, Fitzgerald.'

'Don't see it?'

'Farther to the left. The mare sees it. We must trot a bit, or it won't
rise fair. Steady, lass, steady!'

'I see it,' came in excited tones from George, 'by the big bush, Miss
Tweedie.'

'That's another,' cautioned Lewis again. 'Take care and don't----'

_Whirr, buzz! Whirr, buzz!_

'Ride it! Ride it!'

The cry came from two quarters; but Shâhzâd was already extended, and
Rose forgetful of everything save those brown wings low down against
the horizon. She was closer on them this time, for she could see their
skimming swoop as they neared a heavy clump of cover. Yet she felt she
must lose them, as she had done before, when to her relief she saw
Lewis shoot ahead.'

'All right,' he shouted, 'I'm on. Look out for yourself.'

There was a cut of his thong against thorns as he rose Bronzewing to a
hedge which Rose had not seen. But she had scarcely steadied herself in
the saddle from the half-considered leap in his wake before the
partridge was down and up again at right-angles to its first flight;
Lewis meanwhile bringing the mare round all he knew, and shouting,
'Ride it, Miss Tweedie! ride it.'

Shâhzâd, still steadied by the jump, was in hand, and, therefore, on
the track in a second, snorting in mad hurry and excitement, and the
bird was not quite so fast this time, or Rose was riding straighter,
for she saw the last skim of the wings change to running feet as it
touched the grey brown earth which tinted so perfectly with its
plumage.

'Not there! not there!' came that warning voice from behind. 'It's run
on. The next bush--put Shâhzâd over it.'

A leap, a scurry, a flutter, and the quarry was up again, heading in
its hurry for an impossible open, backed by bare plough. Bronzewing
being now alongside, Rose found leisure to glance round for the others.

'Gone after the second partridge,' said Lewis. 'I was afraid of it.
There's a hedge twenty yards ahead, Miss Tweedie, I'll mark.'

They were over it, almost in the stride, and now the bird was below the
horizon, a mere shadow of darker brown against the plough.

'I've lost it! I've lost it again!' The despairing cry came from Rose's
very heart as she tugged vainly at Shâhzâd. When she succeeded in
bringing him up, she saw that Lewis was slipping from the mare.

'AH right!' he cried cheerfully, dropping his white handkerchief on the
ground, 'it's somewhere about! That's the place I marked; now for sharp
eyes.'

Up and down the bare furrows he searched, followed by Bronzewing, her
reins dangling. Up and down, with such patience, that Rose, gaining
confidence, began to search also. Only, however, to lose hope, as
minute after minute brought no result.

'I don't believe it's here,' she remarked at last; and with the words
saw Lewis Gordon stoop to pick up something she had passed by, thinking
it was a clod of earth.

'Your first partridge!' he said with a kindly laugh, as he placed the
bird upon her lap. There it lay unhurt, wide-eyed and motionless as it
had lain among the furrows.

'Why doesn't it fly away?' asked Rose, with a little catch in her
breath, as she gently stroked the mottled back.

'It will, soon. At present it's winded. Give it five minutes, and we
could ride it again; but we won't. It flew game, and I needn't ask if
you enjoyed it.'

No need, certainly. The very horses panting, nose down in each other's
faces, seemed discussing past pleasure.

'It is safe from kites now,' said Lewis. 'Throw it up, Miss Tweedie.'

The next instant a skimming flight had ended in a covert of thorns and
Lewis was on his mare ready to start.

'It wouldn't head for the open again, I bet, he said, 'they get as
'cute as an old fox after a time. To your left, please, that rise
yonder is Hodinuggur.'

'But we might ride again, surely? It would give the others time to come
up, began Rose, fiercely bitten with the game.

'Best not. The ground here is bad going; all littered with bricks.
And you could barely hold Shâhzâd that last time. A snaffle is hard
work--for a lady.'

Rose refrained from open retort. Lewis had given her a morning's
amusement, and she owed him something; for all that, she made a mental
determination to ride partridge as often as she chose with a snaffle.
His objection was only part of that wholesale depreciation--here a
partridge buzzed out of a bush, and partly from impulse, partly from
sheer opposition, she gave Shâhzâd the rein. A bit of bravado in which
she reckoned without the excited horse. Ere she had gone fifty yards,
she realised it had the bit between its teeth. What was worse, she saw
that Lewis realised it also.

'Look out for bricks,' he called, spurring Bronzewing alongside for a
moment, 'and don't try to follow when the bird breaks back, as it is
sure to do, for cover.'

The words were still on his lips, when the partridge towered and
turned. Shâhzâd, no novice at such tricks, pulled up short, nearly
throwing Rose over his ears. Then, with a bound, he dashed off
sideways, catching Bronzewing on the flank as she swerved, and throwing
her rider's foot from the stirrup. The mare staggered, pulled herself
together smartly, set her hoof on a loose brick, and came down heavily;
while Rose, tugging vainly at her beast, went sailing away to the
horizon, with the memory of that crashing fall seeming to paralyse her
strength. When she did manage to turn, Bronzewing was on her feet; but
her rider lay where he had fallen. The girl's heart stood still an
instant in that utmost fear which will come first--was he _dead_? Yet,
as she galloped back she told herself, fiercely, that it was
impossible; people fell so often, and did not hurt themselves. But not,
surely, to lie as he lay, with eyes wide open and one arm under him as
if he had pitched head-foremost. Rose had never seen an accident
before, and at first all her helpfulness seemed lost in a senseless
desire to gather him up in her arms and hold him safe. Then the thought
of her own foolishness came to her aid. He had been right! Women were
no good!' A man would have known what to do, and as she thought these
things, she searched, comically enough, in his pockets for a flask, as
if unconsciously reverting to the first resource of the male animal;
but she could find none, and there was no water. What was to be done,
save to chafe his hands and call to him vainly, while a perfect agony
of negation clamoured against her growing fear. He could not be dead!
He was such a good rider. He must have fallen before and not been
killed. Why should he be killed this time? He could not be killed on
such a bright sunny morning--when they had been so happy--when he had
been so kind. Ridiculous, trivial little thoughts, such as make up the
sum of such scenes.

Finally she rose, resolved by her very despair. Water and help she must
have. If no nearer than the palace, then to the palace she must go.
Shâhzâd had taken advantage of liberty to seek a wheat field, but
Bronzewing would carry her with the stirrup over. The mare, however,
distrusting strangers, sidled off, still circling faithfully round her
master. Then the girl's hopes and fears centred themselves on the
immediate necessity for success. She coaxed, wheedled, cajoled,
forgetting all else, till all of a sudden Bronzewing paused to whinny,
and Rose, looking round instinctively, recognised the magnitude of her
past despair in the light of her great relief as she saw Lewis Gordon,
raised on one elbow, looking at her in a dazed sort of way. She was on
her knees beside him in a minute, confessing the past fear she had so
strenuously denied while it existed.

'I thought you were dead!' she cried. 'I thought you were dead.' She
was trembling and shaking all over, quite visibly, and he gave an
unsteady laugh.

'Thumped the back of my head; that's all. No!' a spasm of pain passed
over his face as he sat up. 'My collarbone's gone. Well! it might have
been worse. The ground is uncommonly hard.'

Worse indeed! Rose could not speak for a lump in her throat; but the
loquacity of escape was upon him.

'Must have pitched on my shoulder, luckily. I don't in the least
remember how it happened. We were partridging, I suppose; but my mind
is an absolute blank. No wonder! my head is just splitting; but I can
walk home all right.'

And when she proposed riding Bronzewing for help, he negatived it
firmly on the ground that the mare wasn't broken in for a lady; a man
never having such a strong hold on his individual quips and cranks as
when he realises that he has been within an ace of losing them
altogether; whence comes the proverbial captiousness of convalescents.

So she had to be content with giving him a hand up and walking beside
him, feeling a sad trembling in the knees joined to a general sensation
of having gone to pieces. He, on the contrary, talking and laughing in
magnificent, manly fashion.

'You had better tell me how it happened,' he said, as they neared the
palace. 'People make such a fuss, that it is as well to be prepared.
Did you see me come to grief?'

Rose hesitated for a moment to own up; then she did it wholesale.

'You told me not to ride because of the snaffle, but I did. I lost
control of Shâhzâd; he charged Bronzewing. She put her foot on a loose
brick, and--and I'm very, very sorry.'

'Stupid little beast,' he said, looking round at the mare, who was
following them like a dog. 'I expect she wants re-shoeing.'

The evasion was kindly meant; but she regretted it. It seemed somehow
to set her aside. But this was her portion in all things, for with
Lewis in his room, scientifically bandaged by Dan and nursed by his
cousin, Rose's part resolved itself into doing audience for her
father's fussing. He had a capacity for it at all times, but Fate had
provided him with special reasons for it now. Another delay! and when
it was absolutely necessary that he should hold a Canal Committee at
Delhi early in the week, how was he to manage without his personal
assistant? Then there were private reasons for annoyance which he did
not confide to Rose, but which that clear-sighted young lady fully
understood. If Lewis had to remain a few days longer at Hodinuggur, his
cousin would remain also; in which case Dan Fitzgerald would stay to
look after them. Now Dan, ever since the fire, had been in the
Colonel's black books. He had, as it were, thrust himself forward and
made himself conspicuous. Finally, any woman must feel gratitude to a
man who had saved her life. It was all of a piece--all the result of
disobedience to his superior wisdom. Why had Rose set fire to the camp?
Had he not warned her a hundred times against sitting up to read? Why
had she charged Lewis? Had he not begged her fifty times to ride in a
more reserved and ladylike fashion?

Rose could only fall back on George for comfort, and he, for reasons of
his own, was utterly unsympathetic. A broken collar-bone, he said, was
nothing--except an awful nuisance to every one else. To tell truth, the
only person in that up-stairs world who was satisfied at the new turn
affairs had taken was Gwen Boynton. It suited her admirably in more
ways than one. So she sat after lunch and talked with Colonel Tweedie
in the balcony until his ill-humour vanished in a bland flood of
conviction that this eminently charming woman really was full of
sympathy for his difficulties, and thoroughly impressed with his
responsible position. In fact, when she had apologised for returning to
duty and her patient, he came and let loose his satisfaction upon his
daughter. Nothing was more useful to a man having authority than the
companionship of a really sensible woman of the world. It enabled you
to do justice to yourself, to adopt the course you considered best
without undue hesitation. Therefore he would start for Rajpore, as he
had always intended to do, on the following day, taking Mr. Fitzgerald
with him to supply Gordon's place. He knew something of the current
work, and it would be a kindness, serving to show--er--that--er--there
was really nothing against him at headquarters.

'That was very considerate of Mrs. Boynton,' interrupted Rose quickly.
She saw the meaning of this man[oe]uvre so far that it roused her
resentment, even though, after all, it would be better for Dan than
dangling about with a sore heart while Gwen nursed the sick man. Better
for George also, since the _partie carrée_ could not well consist of
three and a dummy. George should talk to her, and so be kept from
dangling also.

Thus Dan himself was the only one to look blank at the proposal, and
even he admitted its reasonableness when Mrs. Boynton pointed out the
many advantages it would have. This was during the _tête-à-tête_, in a
bell-shaped cupola, which she allowed him over their tea. To tell
truth, Gwen always behaved with the strictest and most impartial
justice to all who had claims upon her, and she would have felt herself
unkind had she allowed poor dear Dan to go away feeling aggrieved. She
was very sorry he had to go, or rather, to be strictly accurate, she
was sorry that common-sense dictated that he should go. Had all things
been consenting, there was no one in the wide world she would so gladly
have had for a husband. Now, when a woman of Mrs. Boynton's type, which
is at all times kindly disposed to lovers, has an idea of this sort
firmly fixed in her mind, she can be very kind indeed, even in her
dismissals. So Dan was perfectly happy after he had sat beside her, and
given her a second cup of tea, and handed her the bread and butter,
though he made wry faces over her lecture on the necessity for
subordinating his opinions to Colonel Tweedie's.

'And, Dan,' she said, when the _tête-à-tête_ had lasted long enough,
'as you are going to Delhi, you might take a parcel for me to Manohar
Lâl, the jeweller's. It is quite small, but you might just send it
round--the shop is in the Chowk--by the bearer. I wouldn't trouble you,
but it is a chance, as you are going that way. It won't bother you,
will it?'

'Bother,' echoed Dan in the tones which men in his condition use on
such occasions.

'Then, I'll give it you now. I was going to send it by post, so it is
addressed, and all the instructions are inside; but it would be safer
if you took it--as you happen to be going.'

She repeated the phrase as if to convince herself of its truth. Yet
when, on returning with her commission, Dan seized the opportunity of
taking the parcel to kiss the fingers which held it, she felt something
of a traitor. Even though, in sending the jewels she had found to be
appraised, she told herself she had no other intention beyond, if
possible, getting enough money to repay the loan she had so unwisely
taken. That was all; and this chance of sending to Delhi by a safe hand
had decided her so far--no more.

'Good-bye, dear Dan,' she said; 'I always miss you so much when you go
away.'

That night Chândni reported progress to the Diwân. The mem's ayah had
let out that the big Huzoor, Fitzgerald sahib, was the greatest friend
the mem had. She must be a regular bad one, if all tales were true. And
the big sahib was going to Delhi, the most likely place in which jewels
would be sold. She would write to her craft, who were good clients of
the goldsmiths, and bid them keep a sharp look-out. It would at least
do no harm.

'Thy father must have been the devil,' said Zubr-ul-Zamân admiringly;
'yet will I reward thee, as thou hast asked, if all goes well.

'Does not all go well?' laughed the woman. 'The fire, and the fall?'

'And the girl?'

'Oh, naught of the girl!--the lance-player hits not the peg first time.
That part is done, that tune played, for good or evil. The bridegroom,
they say, comes next week. 'Tis well; we want no evil eye to change the
luck.'

                              CHAPTER XI

The _dîners à la russe_ on the roof had not passed unnoticed by the
world below. How could they? Over such strange doings curious tongues
must need wag, setting other curious eyes to peep and peer; especially
in the women's apartments, where life was so empty of novelty and where
a crowded squabbling glimpse, from some lattice, of arrival or
departure was all the inmates could hope for, beyond, of course, the
ceremonial visit which the English ladies paid to a circle of selected
wives.

But there, in company dresses and company manners, the chief women of
three generations had found it impossible to ask enough questions to
throw any light on the one absorbing phenomenon of utter shamelessness
in their visitors; and after Colonel Tweedie's departure disputes began
to run high in that rabbit-warren of dark rooms and darker passages,
centred round a bit of roof walled in to the semblance of a tank, which
lay to the right of the Diwân's tower.

The elder women, led by the old man's last remaining wife, a still
personable woman of forty, upheld the theory which has had so much to
do with British supremacy in the past; namely, that the sahib-logue,
being barely human, must not be judged by ordinary human standards. As
likely as not, their women were not women at all. The younger party,
however, consisting largely of Dalel Beg's many matrimonial ventures in
the forlorn hope of a son, declared that the true explanation lay the
other way; namely, in the excess of frail humanity. Both positions
being argued with that absolute want of reserve which is the natural
result of herding women together away from the necessity for modest
reticence which the presence of even their stranger sisters brings with
it. That lack of reserve in the mind by which nature compensates
herself for the seclusion of the body, and which makes those who have
real experience of the working of the zenana system put their finger on
it as the plague-spot of India; a plague-spot which all the women
doctors sent to bolster up the system by exotic and mistaken
benevolence will never cure.

And to the war of words, Azîzan listened listlessly as she crouched for
hours beside that slit in the prison wall, whence on tip-toe she could
see the flag-stone before the mosque on which she had sat when he was
painting her picture. She had ceased to cry, ceased to do anything save
mope about in the dark with dull resentful eyes taking in the emptiness
and hopelessness of all things; even her desires going no further than
a vague wish that she could have seen the flag-stone where the sahib
had sat, instead of that dull, uninteresting, unconsecrated one. But in
that house of languid, listless, useless women her dejection might have
passed unnoticed save for the fact that old Zainub, the duenna, began
to be troubled with an old enemy--the rheumatism.

Up-stairs on the roof, the connection between Azîzan's tears and
Zainub's sciatica would have seemed far-fetched, obscure; down-stairs,
however, it was self-evident, clear as daylight. Briefly, Azîz had the
evil eye, like her grandfather the potter, and she was using it, as her
mother had used it. Sixteen years before, after nursing that mother in
the damp dungeon, where useless cries could be deadened, Zainub had
nearly died of rheumatic fever. Not from the damp, of course; simply
from the evil eye. Nothing, in fact, had saved her life then, save a
promise to protect the baby. And now for the sake of money, she had
brought grief on the child, and unless that grief could be assuaged,
the result was certain; she would die. The pains were already upon her,
and a dozen times a day she cursed her own folly in helping Chândni;
Chândni who, when the ruse failed, had thrown her over with a paltry
fee. Yet old Zainub, even while she blamed herself, confessed that no
duenna could have foreseen such a coil about nothing; but then the
world was full of strange new wickedness. In the old time no girl in
her senses would have met the suggestion of carrying on the intrigue on
her own account as Azîzan had done, with vehement denial and glowering,
unhappy eyes. The thought of them sent additional twinges through poor
old Zainub's bones. George Keene, who had taken up his quarters in the
state-rooms of the palace, so as to be near Lewis Gordon at night,
never dreamt how narrowly he escaped the invasion of an old beldame
beseeching him to remove a curse from her. He had for the time almost
forgotten the Azîzan episode; even the surprise which the potter's
mention of his daughter's name had aroused he set aside for the
present. There would be time enough for inquiry when he was alone once
more; when the absorbing interest of the present had gone out of his
life.

So the tragedy down-stairs was completely hidden from those up-stairs.
It is so often in India. Occasionally we gain a glimpse behind the
veil; for instance, when the periodical scare as to the number of human
brains required to keep up British prestige seizes on some cantonment.
A scare which it may interest the 'Peace with Dishonour, party to know
is apt to follow on any lowering of the Lion's tail. Then there are two
simple syllables, known doubtless to many readers of this veracious
story as they are to the writer of it, which if uttered casually--say
in dinner-table conversation--will of a certainty lead to your servants
leaving your service without delay. These things sound unreal,
farcical, no doubt; so would George, as he handed their bread and
butter to the ladies up-stairs, have deemed the fear which prompted old
Zainub's wheedling words as she crouched by Azîzan's bed plying her
with greasy sweetmeats.

'Eat some, my pigeon--a morsel, beloved! Why wilt not be comforted,
child? Say what is in thy heart, and if Zainub's old hands can compass
it, 'tis thine.

'I want nothing. Let me be,' muttered Azîzan.

Zainub rocked herself to and fro, partly in despair, partly to allay a
sharper twinge of the enemy, and looked round dismally as if for some
inspiration of comfort. There was not much to suggest it in those bare
walls, inexpressibly squalid, dirty beyond belief; save the cemented
floor, which underwent a daily sprinkling from a skin water-bag, and a
daily lashing with a reed broom. There was a mark of the passage of
that skin bag up the narrow stairs in a cleaner streak along the grimy
walls, and a mark of that reed broom in the spatter-work dado of slush
round the room. The smoke of rushlights blackened the arched niches,
their oily dribblings seamed the once whitewashed walk below, and
centuries of cobwebs hung on the rough rafters. There was no furniture
of any sort or kind, excepting the low stool on which Zainub crouched,
and the string cot whereon the girl had flung herself recklessly. Not
even resting fairly, but half on, half off, each listless curve showing
her indifferent despair; her flimsy veil crushed into a pillow, her
unkempt yet braided hair showing she had not thought of it for days. No
uncommon sight in the zenana, when so and so's 'constitution is
disturbed,' as the phrase runs.

'Would it soothe thee to talk of it?' whined the old lady.

'No! no!' Azîz sat up in sudden anger. 'I hate him. I hate everybody.'
Then, her own confused emotion being strange and new to her, she sought
refuge with a whimper in her old sullenness.

'Ari! pretty one,' replied Zainub, relieved at something tangible.
'Thou art right to hate him. Yet grieve not, since he hath gained
naught of thee. Thou hast passed him by scornfully.'

On the face turned to the dirty wall something like a smile quivered.

'He hath the pot--the Ayôdhya pot,' murmured Azîz half to herself. 'He
kept that--he liked that.' The duenna beat her shrivelled hands
together and laughed shrilly.

'Wah illâh! he hath kept it, sure enough, but he will rue it. Look you!
I know not the ins and outs; yet will the pot bring him evil. Yea! even
though he hath given it to the mem up-stairs.'

Azîzan was on her feet ere the words were finished, her eyes aflame,
her whole figure trembling with excitement.

'He hath given it away! Mai Zainub, is it truth? He hath given it to
the mems! Ah! how I hate them. It is mine! I will have it back. I
will--I will.'

She flung herself once more on the bed, almost choking with her
passionate cries, wild in her uncontrolled jealousy, while Zainub,
mystified and half impatient, deprecated the foolish, impossible
desire. Did she not want revenge? Well, the pot was to bring it about.
It would bring money to the treasury also, and before that
consideration what mere personal whim could stand? Finally, it was not
hers, but the Diwân's, who had a right to let the pot go as he chose.

Azîzan's ultimatum came swiftly with a savage gleam in her light eyes.

'Then I will die; and others shall die, too.' The girl was no fool; she
could see through the secret of Zainub's docility by the light of many
a covert allusion of her companions to her strange eyes. Well, if the
power was hers she would use it, so give her back the Ayôdhya pot or
take the chance. Zainub crept away disconsolate; even with her
life-long experience of the vagaries in which hysterical girls indulged
she demanded shrilly of High Heaven if there had ever been contrariety
equal to Azîzan's. To set aside the possibility of revenge! Still she
must do her best, and if the mem had the Ayôdhya pot in the palace
there was always a chance of being able to steal it. As a beginning she
spent some of Chândni's rupees on sweetmeats, and, hiding the tray
under her domino, set off to pay her respects to Mrs. Boynton's ayah.

'The _burka_ is certainly a most mysterious garment,' remarked Gwen, as
she lent over the balcony just as Zainub shuffled through the courtyard
on her errand. 'Did I ever mention the fright I had one morning? I woke
thinking that a pair of those latticed goggles were glaring at me; but
it was only Fuzli looking in to see if I was awake. Still it alarmed
me.'

'Women have a hard time of it,' said Lewis languidly from the arm-chair
at her side, where he was playing the part of interesting invalid after
four days of unwelcome fever. 'How I should hate to have nerves!'

'We are not a whole army of martyrs, however,' objected Rose swiftly.
'I, for one, decline to be credited with them.'

As she sat pouring out the tea with George Keene's help her face rather
belied her words. She looked fine-drawn and eager, her eyes bright, yet
tired. Gwen smiled confidentially at her companion.

'People in good times never have nerves, so you and Mr. Keene have no
excuse for them at present. By the way, you must have been successful
with the partridges today, for I assure you, Lewis, they were not in to
breakfast till past twelve.'

Not much in the words--much in the manner. It made Rose bring her cup
of tea to the balcony and stand looking with a satirical smile at the
pair seated there before she turned to George.

'We think Mr. Gordon is in a good time also! don't we, Mr. Keene? You
should break something too; Mrs. Boynton would be quite equal to
another patient.'

The crudeness, not to say rudeness, of her own words startled her into
adding hastily, 'For she is a good nurse; isn't she, Mr. Gordon?

'First-class for one,' he replied coolly; 'but I doubt her managing
three. Therefore, if Keene is going to break something, as you suggest,
it would be as well if, for a change, you took some care of yourself.
At present you look miserably ill.'

Rose flushed into health at once.

'I? Rubbish! If you have quite finished tea, Mr. Keene, let us go on
with that match at tennis.'

'There they go, supremely happy,' commented Gwen from her post of
vantage after a pause. 'I'm a shockingly bad chaperon, but that is your
fault, Lewis, for getting fever. Do you think _monsieur le père_ will
be very angry?'

He shifted irritably. 'My dear Gwen, don't overdo it, for goodness
sake. I'm grateful; you know that quite well. But if you want me to
believe that Keene is in love with Miss Tweedie, I must decline to
agree. The lad is palpably in love with you; as we all are. As for
Miss Tweedie, I decline to have any opinion at all. Girls of her type
are beyond me. She looks ill, of course, but no woman can stand
half-a-dozen hours in the saddle before breakfast and half-a-dozen
singles before dinner, with, I suppose, half-a-dozen problems before
lunch and half-a-dozen books before bed. The thing's absurd, and as you
don't seem able to stop it, it is as well we are leaving Hodinuggur so
soon.'

His distinct loss of temper made Gwen change the subject outwardly, but
retain it inwardly as a justification of her tactics. They had been
very simple. A word to George of gratitude for his care of Rose, a
playful remark to the latter on her marked anxiety for the patient's
comfort had left the elder woman mistress of the situation. She was in
no hurry, however, to bring it to a crisis. Time enough for that when
they should nave returned to civilisation, and she had that letter from
the jewellers which might even now be waiting for a certain Mrs.
Arbuthnot at the post-office at Rajpore.

Perhaps she might not have found Rose so ready to acquiesce in plans
through which the young girl saw perfectly if they had not fallen in
with the latter's convenience. It was easier that Lewis Gordon should
believe her occupied with George, and better for the boy than dangling
after Gwen all day; _he_ was too good for that sort of thing. She told