Roy decided to spring the truth on him next time—and note the effect. Dyán had said he would come again one evening; and—sooner than Roy expected—he came. Again he was abnormally voluble, as if holding his cousin at arm's length by italicising his own fanatical fervour, till Roy's impatience subsided into weariness and he palpably stifled a yawn.
Dyán, detecting him, stopped dead, with a pained, puzzled look that went to Roy's heart. For he loved the real Dyán, even while he was bored to extinction with the semi-religious verbiage that poured from him like water from a jug.
"Awfully sorry," he apologised frankly. "But I've been over-dosed with that sort of stuff lately; and I'm damned if I can swallow it like you do. Yet I'm dead keen for India to have the best, all round, that she's capable of digesting—yet. So's Grandfather. You can't deny it."
Dyán frowned irritably. "Grandfather's prejudiced and old-fashioned."
"He's longer-sighted than most of your voluble friends. He doesn't rhapsodise. He knows.—But I'm not old-fashioned. Nor is Arúna."
"No, poor child; only England-infatuated. She is unwise not taking this chance of an educated husband——"
"And such a husband!" Roy struck in so sharply that Dyán stared open-mouthed.
"How the devil can you know?"
"And how the devil can you not know," countered Roy, "when it's your precious paragon—Chandranath."
He scored his point clean and true. "Chandranath!" Dyán echoed blankly, staring into the fire.