“If we go to Burdwán are you content to abide there?”
“Bide you here, Roger,” he muttered shortly. “Keep things as they are until I return. I go to seek Nur Mahal.”
A cloaked woman, who had passed silently between the line of soldiers on the road, and who heard each word of the dialogue, evidently guessed what Walter said, though he used English to Sainton. She darted forward now and clasped his arm. Even before she spoke he knew who it was, for the mere touch of her fingers thrilled him.
“I am here!” she whispered. “Let us draw apart. I have that to say which is best said now. One of us two must answer that man, and we gain naught by delay.”
By the roadside grew a field of millet, the sparse crop of some poor ryot in the village who cared little for kings or courts. He would grin with amaze if told that his small holding formed the council-chamber in which was settled the affairs of a nation. Yet it was so in very truth, for Nur Mahal led Mowbray into the midst of the standing crop until they were out of earshot of the others.
Then she turned towards him, and there was a rapture in her face which was bewildering, though the way in which she still clung to his arm caused the warm blood to tingle in his veins.
“Tell me,” she murmured softly; “if we go to Burdwán, are you content to abide there?”