"He will sleep till evening," he said. "If any come asking for him, say that he has gone abroad, leaving no word. More than this you do not know. The sepoys have an order to prevent all from entrance."
The khansamah touched his forehead respectfully. "It is an order.
Shabash!" he muttered.
A shaft of sunlight struck in through the window and lay stark upon the sleeper's face. He did not move. The khansamah drew close the shades, and with the other left the room in semi-dusk.
II
Beneath the spreading banian, by the cistern of the goldfish, Naraini with smouldering eyes watched Amber disappear in the wilderness of shrubbery. He walked as a man with a set purpose, never glancing back. She laughed uneasily but waited motionless where he had left her, until the echo of his boot-heels on the marble slabs had ceased to ring in the neighbouring corridor. Then, lifting a flower-like hand to her mouth, she touched her lips gently and with an air of curiosity. The resentment in her eyes gave place to an emotion less superficial. "By Indur and by Har!" she swore softly. "In one thing at least he is like a Rajput: he kisses as a man kisses."
She moved indolently along the walk to the rug beneath the canopy where he had found her, her lithe, languid, round body in its gorgeous draperies no whit less insolent than the flaming bougainvillea whose glowing magenta blossoms she touched with idle fingers as she passed.
The east was grey with dusk of dawn—a light that grew apace, making garish the illumination of the flickering, smoking, many-coloured lamps in the garden. Naraini clapped her hands. Soft footsteps sounded in the gallery and one of her handmaidens threaded the shrubbery to her side.
"The lamps, Unda," said the queen; "their light, I think, little becomes me. Put them out." And when this was done, she composedly ordered her pipe and threw herself lazily at length upon a pile of kincob cushions, her posture the more careless since she knew herself secure from observation; the garden being private to her use.
When the tire-woman had departed, leaving at Naraini's side a small silver huqa loaded with fine-cut Lucknow weed, a live ember of charcoal in the middle of the bowl, she sat up and began to smoke, her face of surpassing loveliness quaintly thoughtful as she sucked at the little mouthpiece of chased silver and exhaled faint clouds of aromatic vapour. From time to time she smiled pensively and put aside the tube while she played with the rings upon her slender, petal-like fingers; five rings there were to each hand, from the heavy thumb circlet that might possibly fit a man's little finger to the tiny band that was on her own, all linked together by light strands of gold radiating from the big, gem-encrusted boss of ruddy gold midway between her slim round waist and dimpled knuckles….
The tread of boots with jingling spurs sounded in the gallery, warning her. She sighed, smiled dangerously to herself, and carelessly adjusted her veil, leaving rather more than half her face bare. Salig Singh entered the garden and found his way to her, towering over her beneath the canopy, brave in his green and tinsel uniform. She looked up with a listless hauteur that expressed her attitude toward the man.