“Tell her any glib lie that will get me safely away. Samson was half conquered when it was known wherein his strength lay, and my only sure refuge is flight if a woman attacks. Poor Matilda! I would I had the heart to appease her. Yet I am not for matrimony, and no barber can make a wig of a hide that is bald of wool. But I vow you have vexed me by your niceties. Drat the thing! I trust the bit of Latinity our worthy friar gave me yester e’en is sound sense, else I’ll mope for a week.”
“And what was that, Roger?” asked Mowbray, turning to hide a smile from his wrathful friend.
“He spoke to me of certain passages twixt you and Nur Mahal, as he built somewhat on her power despite Jai Singh’s story. Yet he sighed and said: ‘Quid vento? Mulier. Quid muliere? Nihil!’ It tickled my fancy to put the quip into rhyme:—
‘More fickle than wind
Is woman’s mind;
More fickle than woman
Naught you’ll find.’
Beshrew me! It fitted Nur Mahal all right, but the cap seems to sit awry when worn by my jolly and pleasant-spoken Countess. What! Would you grin at me, you dog, like a clown gaping through a horse-collar? I’ll wager, were the business yours, you'd carry a longer jowl.”
“On my word, Roger, if you trumpet so loudly I must even believe that my Elephant is sore wounded. Why say aught to-day to the Countess? Once we are sped on some new path I promise to write her on your behalf, and in such a strain that any silly notions she may be harboring shall vanish after a day’s fasting.”
“Ecod, you know not Matilda. She would not miss her dinner for twenty men. And that is what draws me to her. A plague on all weddings, I say. They mar a woman and vex a man. What the devil! A nice thing Noah did for the world when he took nowt but pairs into the Ark.”
Nevertheless, though angered by his tardy discovery, Sainton was far too good-natured to steal away covertly from the genial presence of the Countess di Cabota. He cudgeled his brains to invent some reasonable excuse for bidding her farewell. Finally he hit upon an expedient that pleased him greatly, and chased the unwonted frown from his cheerful face.
In view of the expected state visit to Jahangir he had donned his best garments, which, though soiled, were yet free from rents, and never a finer man trod the iron earth of India than Roger that day when, with his four-foot sword clanking against his thigh, he approached the Countess’s camping-place. Already, of course, rumor had been busy. The perturbation of Fateh Mohammed and the haughty curling of Rajput mustaches which followed the advent of Jahangir’s envoy told some portion of the tale to the stealthy-eyed natives. Gossip did the rest. Roger found the Countess all agog with joyous hope.