Five minutes after a plain curtained dhoolie left the precincts and swayed past the Great Hall of Audience with its toothed red arches, looking as if they yawned for victims. The courtyard beyond lay strangely silent, despite the shifting crowd, which gathered and melted and gathered again round the little tree-shaded cistern where but the day before Hâfzan and the Moulvie had watched a mother pause to clasp her baby to softer, securer rest.
The woman and the child were at the cistern now, and the Rest had come. Softer, securer than all other rest, and the mother shared it; shared it with other women, other children.
But as the Princess Farkhoonda, fearful of what she might see, peeped through the dhoolie curtains, there was nothing to be seen save the shifting, curious crowd, while the impartial sunshine streamed down on it, and those on whom it gazed.
So let the shifting, crowding years with their relentless questioning eyes shut out all thought of what lay by the cistern, save that of rest and the impartial sunshine streaming upon it.
For as the beautiful soft eyes drew back relieved, a bugle rang through the arcades, echoed from the wall, floated out into the city. The bugle to set watch and ward, to close the gates; since the irrevocable step had been taken, the death-pledge made.
So the dream of sovereignty began in earnest behind closed gates. But if women had lost Delhi, those who lay murdered about the little cistern had regained it. For Hâfzan had spoken truth; the strength of the Huzoors lay there.
The strength of the real Master.
[CHAPTER II.]
PEACE? PEACE?
Three weeks had passed, and still the dream of sovereignty went on behind the closed gates, while all things shimmered and simmered in the fierce blaze of summer sunlight. The city lay--a rose-red glare dazzling to look at--beside the glittering curves of the river, and the deserted Ridge, more like a lizard than ever, sweltered and slept lazily, its tail in the cool blue water, its head upon the cool green groves of the Subz-mundi. And over all lay a liquid yellow heat-haze blurring every outline, till the whole seemed some vast mirage.