“I am the moth,” she said softly, and raised her hand too late to save it from its enemy.
The Sultan’s own yacht, the Pante, brought the Prince back to Maur, and as it was low tide, the Governor’s launch went out beyond the bar and met him.
The band played the national anthem when he landed on the pier, and Inchi Mohammed, the Tuan Hakim, or Chief Justice, made a speech.
The red gravel walk from the landing to the palace gate was strewn with hibiscus and alamander and yellow convolvulus flowers, and bordered with the delicate maidenhair fern.
Johore and British flags hung in great festoons from the deep verandas of the palace, and the brass guns from the fort gave forth the royal salute.
Anak was in the crowd with her father, the old chief, and her affianced, Noa. She had put on her silk sarong and kabaya, and some curious gold brooches that were her mother’s. In her coal-black hair she had stuck some sprays of the sweet-smelling chumpaka flower. On her slender bare feet were sandals cunningly wrought in colored beads. Her soft brown eyes glowed with excitement, and she edged away from the punghulo’s side until she stood close up in front, so near that she could almost touch the sarong of the Tuan Hakim as he read.
The Prince had grown so since he left that she scarcely knew him, and save for the narrow silk sarong about his waist, he was dressed in the English clothes of a Lieutenant of his Highness’s artillery. In the front of his rimless cap shone the arms of Johore set in diamonds, exactly as his father, the Governor, wore them. He paused and smiled as he thanked the cringing Tuan Hakim.
The blood rushed to the girl’s cheeks, and she nearly fell down at his feet. She realized but dimly that Noa was plucking at her kabaya, wishing her to go with him to see the bungalow that his father was building for them.
“The posts are to be of polished nebong” he was saying, “the wood-work of maranti wood from Pahang; and there is to be a cote, ever so cunningly woven of green and yellow bamboo, for your ring-doves, under the attap of the great eaves above the door.”
She turned wearily toward her lover, and the bright look faded from her comely face. With a half-uttered sigh she drew off her sandals and tucked them carefully beneath the silver zone that held her sarong in place.