No one spoke, no one moved. But Rukh smoked on quietly.
When the silence had lasted so long that all their English nerves were tortured, and cried for relief, any relief, Major Crespin broke it, trying to speak naturally, and failing.
“It surely,” he said, “can’t be so very far, since you had heard of the sentence passed on those assassins.”
The Raja smiled slightly. “I am glad, Major,” he said smoothly, “that you have so tactfully spared me the pain of re-opening that subject. We should have had to come to it sooner or later.”
There was another pause—an embarrassed pause. Rukh waited patient and imperturbable.
“When Your Highness”—Traherne spoke slowly, he was picking his words with care—“said they were your brothers, you were of course speaking figuratively. You meant your tribesmen.”
“Not at all,” the Raja replied; “they are sons of my father—not of my mother.”
Lucilla Crespin turned to him quickly, and he turned his eyes away from the unmistakable sympathy in hers. “And we,” she cried impulsively, “intrude upon you at such a time! How dreadful!” And the Raja of Rukh knew that the woman had spoken and not the hostage.
“Oh, pray don’t apologize,” he begged formally, smothering from his voice the inevitable Oriental gratitude that stirred at his heart. “Believe me, your arrival has given great satisfaction.”
“How do you mean?” Traherne demanded quickly. There had been nothing but menace and hardness in the Rukh’s last sentence.