“All very well theoretically, my dear, but you wait till it has to be done. That’s where the trouble will begin, and we shall all be in two camps. Bayard on one side—one of ourselves, a great shikari, a pukka sportsman—and on the other a foul-mouthed old blackguard who boasts that he knows nothing of India, and goes about abusing high and low the Directors, who are our masters and his, and the Services, who are supposed to be his comrades, and making the troops discontented. Whose part d’ye think most people will take—all old Indians especially?”
“But you wouldn’t mean they’d——”
“I ain’t suggesting there’ll be bloodshed among ourselves. But Bayard will resign, or be kicked out, and old Harry will rush to destruction with no one to stop him. The G.-G. may think he has set him an easy task, but he don’t know Khemistan. It’ll mean war to a certainty. Without Bayard to smooth ’em down, the Khans won’t stand the old chap’s gali, [insults] and their Arabits will face any army we can bring against ’em. Kamal-ud-din especially is full of fight.” He stopped suddenly, then laughed a little. “I don’t know what you’ll say to Kamal-ud-din’s latest, by the bye. Whether the performances of the talisman haven’t quite come up to expectation, or whether he heard of your threat to keep the luck, and resents it, I can’t say, but he seems to think the Seal ain’t quite complete. At any rate, a friend of his called upon me to enquire in the most discreet manner whether I was disposed to part with you, as there was a good home waiting for you where the jewel and you would be reunited.”
“The shameful wretch!” Eveleen’s blue eyes had dilated till they looked all black. “To dare to suggest such a thing——! And what did you say?”
“That his flattering proposals could not be entertained till my wife was a widow—— Eh? what did you say?”
“Nothing more? You let him think——?”
“Oh, I kicked him out. But they saw nothing shocking in the idea, of course—meant everything to be quite open and above-board, arranged in the most friendly way——”
“Well, if you call that friendly!” Tears and fury strove in Eveleen’s voice.
“They would regard it as quite friendly to invite a man to divorce his wife that she might marry some one else. The unfriendly way would be to take her without asking. Now really, my dear! I thought you would look upon it as a good joke, or I wouldn’t have told you.”
“And I suppose he said your wife was a crosspatch, and as ugly as sin, and altogether you’d do well to be rid of her and get another?”