“If they met with his august approval, the merchant’s traffic was singularly free from obstruction; if the element of uncertainty was too pronounced for the apprehensive potentate, the most surprising occasions for the abandonment of his projects were developed for Ram Lal, whose intelligent mind was inclined to suspect the identity of his providence.
“Prince Otondo did not propose to have his interests jeopardized by precipitation or undue hazard.
“But this unhappy merchant, with perverse and unaware industry, advanced still another claim to the covert regard of his calculating highness.
“Although a widower, there remained, to remind him of his departed blessedness, a daughter, who was, as reported by the mercenaries of the prince, beautiful beyond their limited means of expression.
“The unfortunate Ram Lal, therefore, commending himself to this elevated espionage, first by his ‘ducats’ and next his ‘daughter,’ was in the predicament of the missionary whose embonpoint endears him to his savage congregation and whose edibility is convincing enough to arouse the regret that he is not twins.
“Prince Otondo, whose imagination was stimulated by this vicarious contemplation of beauty, did not find it difficult to decide that the transits of Ram Lal to and from the British barracks were open to suspicion that demanded some biased investigation.
“Unfortunately, too, the colonel in charge of the British forces at Delhi was equally uneasy concerning the integrity of the merchant, a state of mind which had been judiciously aggravated by the emissaries of Prince Otondo.
“The officer in charge knew that the merchant, with his license of exit and entry, was in an exceptional position to acquaint himself with considerable merchandisable information.
“Ram Lal, therefore, in response to the pernicious industry of his evil genius, like an unstable pendulum, was in danger of detention at either extreme.
“The prince speculated like a Machiavelli upon the advantages of such action on the part of the colonel, and the latter looked to the former to relieve him of the responsibility.