“Naught that you can bestow,” was the curt reply.
“Sweet one, your words chill my heart. ’Tis but a week since your father—”
She stamped a foot imperiously and clenched her hands.
“I am not one of those to be dealt with as others choose,” she cried, though modulating her voice lest it should reach the Queen’s ears. “Why do you pester me? Your tall sheepskin cap affrights me. Take it and your ungainly presence to far-off Burdwán. I mean to abide in Agra.”
He bent low before her.
“A blow from the hand of my beloved is sweet as a grape from the hand of another,” he said, conscious, perhaps, of the manifest injustice of the attack on his personal appearance. Physically, he was a worthy mate even for such a goddess, and he had already won great renown in India by his prowess in the field and his skill in all manly exercises.
“Gladly would I bestow on you a whole bunch of such grapes,” she said, turning to follow the Sultana and her father. But a laughing shout from the interior of the house caused all eyes to seek its explanation.
“Well met, mother! Have you come, like me, to wring another lakh out of the Diwán?”
A young man, tall and well built and of pleasing aspect, notable for his broad chest and long arms, and attired in sumptuous garments, entered the garden. His words would have revealed his identity to Walter and Sainton had they not met him, two years earlier, at Surat. This was Prince Jahangir, the heir apparent.