In the course of his wanderings, he was amused to meet Aglaia and Kit walking together through the town, with Sumbaten, who looked much puzzled and a little distressed by the innovation, walking behind them.
Kit, of course, hailed him joyfully. 'We're having no end of fun,' he said. 'Isn't everything jolly?'
'Particularly jolly, I think,' answered Tom, laughing. 'But don't keep Aglaia out too late, Kit.'
Then a voice from the near distance hailed him reassuringly, and he saw that the devoted Bâl Narîn was not far from his little Sahib. Billy, in his shikari's dress, looked very much like a fish out of water. The streets of Gumilcund, which to-day were freshly swept and garlanded, were not so congenial to him as the jungle and the mountains; and the bourgeois life of ease and comfort was already beginning to pall upon his fiery soul. But, for the moment, he had constituted himself Kit's guardian, and Tom was perfectly easy about the child.
[CHAPTER L]
VISHNUGUPTA, THE PRIEST
The sun had set, and that lovely rose-lilac glow, which, for a few moments of the evening, makes the skies of the East so entrancingly beautiful, was wrapping heaven and earth in its mystical radiance, when Tom, having finished his day's work, returned to the palace. A syce took Snow-queen, and he went in thoughtfully to his own rooms, wondering if he ought to ask to see Grace, or if it would be better to wait until the following day.
It may be as well to say here that, in the intervals for quiet thought which the business of the day had permitted him, he had made up his mind fully as to his course of action. There should be no repetition of the mistakes of the past. That one outpouring of heart, drawn from him by Grace's anguish of spirit, he could forgive himself. Until he had heard from General or Lady Elton, there should be nothing more of the same kind. He owed it to her, and to their mutual relations—she, a fugitive in his city, a guest in his house: he, the one to whom the honour and happiness of saving her had been granted—to set a seal on the door of his lips, for the present. He owed it to the future—to the position which it was his dearest hope and desire she might one day occupy—to do nothing in a corner, or without the consent and approval of her friends.
But none the less for his prudent resolve to hold himself in check, was his desire to see her and hear her voice.