"Yes, I heard that. Then how are you not worthy of the love of a man if he were a hundred times better than I am?"
"You could not marry me. My father was a traitor, a gambler—we are the same blood."
Finnerty took a step forward and grasped the girl's wrist. The touch steadied him. "Hush, colleen; don't say that. Your father was just a brave, generous Irishman when I knew him before the gambling got into his blood. Fear he did not know. He didn't know how to do a mean act; he'd give away his last penny—the gambling got into his blood. Wasn't that what got him into this? It was India that scorched and seared his soul—the life here. The others had money, and here they lavish it, throw it about, gamble. He tried to keep his end up, for he was game. He was unlucky—it was a second name for him in the service—'Unlucky' Foley. I tell you it got into his blood, the wild Irish blood that boils so easily—that is not cold and sluggish from dilution from the essence of self."
It was curious the metamorphosis of love, the glamour of it that roused the imaginative sympathy of Finnerty, till, for the girl's sake, all her geese were swans. And yet there was truth in what he said; only a Celt could have understood Foley as Finnerty did.
Finnerty's hand had taken the other wrist. He drew the girl's hands up and placed them either side of his neck, and looked into her eyes. "Colleen, I love you. Nothing in the world is going to take you from me—nothing. I'm going to seal that with a kiss, and neither man nor devil is going to part us after that."
As his arms went around the girl a tremour shook the earth, the bungalow rocked drunkenly, they heard the crashing of rocks and trees somewhere on the plateau.
Chapter XXIII
It had been easy for Darna Singh to smuggle Swinton through the tiger garden gate, for the guard were tribesmen of his own—rajputs who really hated Ananda.
And now the two sat in a room of the palace, at Swinton's elbow a switch that, at a shift, would send a current of eruptive force into the magazine. Through a closed lattice they looked out upon the terrace thronged with natives—Mussulmans, Hindus, Buddhists; and, gazing, Swinton thought that it was like bringing together different explosives—a spark would perhaps fan a sudden mental conflagration among these fanatics. Silence reigned—a hush hung over the many-coloured throng as if something of this held them on guard.