“You remember what a mistake I made,” she said, “and how disappointed I was when you refused me? I did not know then what fate had in store.”
“You are still a fatalist then?” said Hilton, smiling.
“Why not?” she replied, proudly, as she went behind her great lord’s chair, and placed her arm affectionately upon his shoulder. “Has not fate given me the best and noblest of husbands—a just and true man, who has become the father of my people, my protector, and my lord?”
“Then you are both very happy?” said Hilton.
“Happy, old boy!” cried Chumbley, glancing affectionately at his wife, “happy isn’t the word for it; we’re thoroughly jolly, and in my way I’m a king.”
“But don’t you miss European society?”
“Not I, lad. I hunt, and shoot, and drill my subjects, and sit as judge, and look after the revenues, and my own little parliament. I’ve no time to be dull; and do you know, old chap, I don’t think I’m quite so slow as I was. I tell you what it is: if I had known how jolly it is to be a chief, I should have tried it on years before. But you’re going to stop, of course?”
“I’m going to beg some dinner, and then I’m off back to the Residency, where my wife is staying with the Harleys.”
“Then go back and fetch her—eh, my dear, what do you say?”
“Let us all go together and fetch her,” said the Inche Maida, smiling; and Grey Hilton was fetched to spend a month at Chumbley’s home, finding her old friend affectionate to a degree, while endless were the hunting and shooting excursions got up by the English Rajah in honour of his friend.