“Oh, the women!” Mr Burgrave spoke quite calmly again, and with evident relief. “You must remember that Bahram Khan is a good deal more advanced in his notions than the other Sardars of the province, and would like to imitate our ways with regard to ladies—English ladies, I mean. That is just the sort of thing that native women can’t understand. Any polite attention he might offer you would be misconstrued by them into a cause for violent jealousy. Their mistake made things extremely unpleasant for you at the moment, no doubt; but you need not torment yourself with thinking that he had any such preposterous idea in his head.”
Mr Burgrave did not actually say that a lady accustomed to universal admiration was liable to perceive it even where it did not exist, but this was what Mabel understood his slightly repressive tone to imply. Ignorant of the Eye-of-the-Begum’s secret mission to Georgia, she could not defend herself against the suggestion, and she grew crimson.
“Why don’t you say that I imagined the whole thing?” she demanded. “It’s not an experience I am proud of, I assure you. I told it you purely in the hope that it might open your eyes a little, but since you prefer to regard Bahram Khan as an interesting martyr——”
“Pray don’t mistake me, Miss North. If I believed that Bahram Khan had really devised this dastardly plot against you, I would hunt him down like a bloodhound until he was delivered up to justice, though that would mean the death of all my hopes for this frontier. In one way, of course, it would simplify matters a good deal. I am not in the habit of bothering ladies with politics, but there can be no harm in saying that it gives me great pain to differ from a man I respect as I do your brother. He has done so much for the frontier that it seems almost presumption in me, a new-comer, to set my opinion above his. However, I have formed that opinion after long and careful study of the Khemistan problem, and only the very strongest proof that I had been mistaken could induce me to alter it. But if you should be able to identify Bahram Khan’s servants as your assailants, it would be conclusive evidence that he is not the man I take him to be.”
“And then you would see that Dick was right, and leave him to manage things in his own way?”
“My dear Miss North, we are now soaring into the domain of improbabilities. If my opinion were once modified, it is possible that your brother’s view might prevail, or again, it might not.”
“I am certain he would not be sorry if Bahram Khan was proved to be untrustworthy,” was Mabel’s mental comment. “It would show him a way out of his difficulty. And now I shall be able to do it.”
Mabel was particularly cheerful all the rest of the day, as indeed she had a right to be, for was she not about to secure the safety of the frontier? Warned by her experience of the morning, she made no further attempt to entrap Mr Burgrave into a political discussion, but contented herself with showing in numberless little ways her gratitude for the concession he was prepared to make. She even welcomed his offer to introduce her to the beauties of Robert Browning, a poet whose works she had been wont to regard with the mingled alarm and dislike which, in the case of a modern young lady, can only spring from ignorance of them. He sent a servant back to the bungalow he had occupied to fetch the two portly volumes which, as he told her, always formed a part of his travelling library, and she read aloud to him without a murmur a considerable portion of “Paracelsus.” Under the combined influence of his favourite poet and the reader’s voice, the Commissioner forgot alike his injuries and the difficulties which beset his policy, and the household fairly basked in his smiles. This, at least, was what Fitz Anstruther said, but he had happened to intrude upon the reading as the bearer of an important message from Dick, and was adversely affected by the peaceful scene.
The next morning, as Dick was going to his office, Mabel intercepted him in the verandah. “I am ready to identify those men as soon as you like, Dick,” she said.
He looked at her in surprise. “Wouldn’t you rather wait until you have recovered a little from the shock?” he asked.