'I do not know, Captain Lloyd,' she retorted loftily. 'I know nothing about horse-racing. Why is it safer?'
He coughed uneasily. 'Ah! I thought you would know, you know, and it's a bit hard to explain. You see, Indian racing is sometimes a trifle odd--considering, I mean, that we are all gentlemen--or supposed to be so. But Raymond,' here he brightened up, 'is always a straight win. That's why Lucre and his crew----'
He stopped short as one of a group of men, amongst whom Mr. Lucanaster showed conspicuous by his red tie, paused in the general exodus to answer a bystander's question.
'Luck? How the deuce is any one to have luck when you can't get a fair bet placed? Even the Devil's Own didn't get on with His Royal Highness.'
Mr. Lucanaster acknowledged another of his nicknames by a lavish smile. 'There is faith as mustard in Raymond among our nigger friends,' he said, with the eccentricity of accent and idiom which, following him into every language he knew, made his nationality an insoluble problem. He glanced back as he spoke towards a cluster of native gentlemen who, following a lead as ever, were also making their way from the stand. The similarity of their oval yellow faces, their thin curves of moustache trained to a fine sweep above the full betel-stained lips, proclaimed them of the same family; but Lesley singled out the Rightful Heir by his cloth-of-gold coatee, and by something which, rather to her own surprise, thrilled her unexpectedly--a green gleam of sovereignty on the small supple hand raised in a salaam of servitude as its owner passed the Lieutenant-Governor and his party.
'I'm always glad,' continued Nevill Lloyd virtuously, when Lucre and his crew are hit! They get betting with the Nawâbs and offering 'em drinks. Shocking bad form--by the way, Miss Drummond, come to our tent and have a peach-brandy!'
Lesley, with another trait of the modern girl--her toleration of the male sex up to the age of twenty-five--laughed good-humouredly. 'It isn't bad form with a lady, apparently, for that's the fifth peach-brandy I've been offered in half an hour!'
'Well! aren't there five tents? And you haven't been to ours,' argued the lad quite gravely. 'Do come! It needn't be a peach-brandy, you know. Have tea, or a chocolate caramel, just to show there isn't any ill-feeling.'
She smiled in sisterly fashion at his kindly, clean-looking young face, and--Jerry having gone with his father--passed with it into that marvellous golden glory of Indian sunshine which still struck her Western eyes as the most noticeable factor in her Eastern environment. The rest, barring the native costumes, was hopelessly Western, she told herself, as she stood listening to the scraps of talk around, while Nevill Lloyd struggled for her cup of tea. Polo talk, polite talk, political talk; then something she could not classify as two natives drifted by with an air of aloofness.
As they did so a plaintive woman's voice rose close to her. 'I shall send baby home, as we've been transferred to Cawnpore.'