“And she is in Mecca now?” cried Ahmed Ismail.

“Yes.  An old, old woman,” said Shere Ali, dwelling upon the words with a quiet, cruel pleasure.  He had the picture clear before his eyes, he saw it in the flame of the lamp at which he gazed so steadily—­an old, wizened, shrunken woman, living in a bare room, friendless and solitary, so old that she had even ceased to be aware of her unhappiness, and so coarsened out of all likeness to the young, bright English girl who had once dwelt in Cawnpore, that even her own countryman had hardly believed she was of his race.  He set another picture side by side with that—­the picture of Violet Oliver as she turned to him on the steps and said, “This is really good-bye.”  And in his imagination, he saw the one picture merge and coarsen into the other, the dainty trappings of lace and ribbons change to a shapeless cloak, the young face wither from its beauty into a wrinkled and yellow mask.  It would be a just punishment, he said to himself.  Anger against her was as a lust at his heart.  He had lost sight of her kindness, and her pity; he desired her and hated her in the same breath.

“Are you married, Ahmed Ismail?” he asked.

Ahmed Ismail smiled.

“Truly, Huzoor.”

“Do you carry your troubles to your wife?  Is she your companion as well as your wife?  Your friend as well as your mistress?”

Ahmed Ismail laughed.

“Yet that is what the Englishwomen are,” said Shere Ali.

“Perhaps, Huzoor,” replied Ahmed, cunningly, “it is for that reason that there are some who take and do not give.”

He came a little nearer to his Prince.

“Where is she, Huzoor?”

Shere Ali was startled by the question out of his dreams.  For it had been a dream, this thought of capturing Violet Oliver and plucking her out of her life into his.  He had played with it, knowing it to be a fancy.  There had been no settled plan, no settled intention in his mind.  But to-night he was carried away.  It appeared to him there was a possibility his dream might come true.  It seemed so not alone to him but to Ahmed Ismail too.  He turned and gazed at the man, wondering whether Ahmed Ismail played with him or not.  But Ahmed bore the scrutiny without a shadow of embarrassment.

“Is she in India, Huzoor?”

Shere Ali hesitated.  Some memory of the lessons learned in England was still alive within him, bidding him guard his secret.  But the memory was no longer strong enough.  He bowed his head in assent.

“In Calcutta?”

“Yes.”

“Your Highness shall point her out to me one evening as she drives in the Maidan,” said Ahmed Ismail, and again Shere Ali answered—­

“Yes.”

But he caught himself back the next moment.  He flung away from Ahmed Ismail with a harsh outburst of laughter.

“But this is all folly,” he cried.  “We are not in the days of the uprising,” for thus he termed now what a month ago he would have called “The Mutiny.”  “Cawnpore is not Calcutta,” and he turned in a gust of fury upon Ahmed Ismail.  “Do you play with me, Ahmed Ismail?”