He slipped two rupees into her hand, adding:  “Two more—­when all is done according to order.”

“Hai!  Hai! The Sahib is a Son of Princes,” murmured the favoured one, reflecting shrewdly that eight annas would suffice to feed those poor empty creatures; and gathering up her light burden she bore it away—­to Roy’s unfeigned relief.

Would Thea scold him—­or uphold him, he wondered,—­having committed himself.  The whole thing had been so swift, so unreal, that he seemed half a world away from the green Residency garden, with its atmosphere of twentieth-century England, scrupulously, yet unconsciously, preserved in a setting of sixteenth-century India.  And Roy had a strain of both in his composition.

Across the road Bishun Singh—­tolerant of his Sahib’s vagaries—­was still chatting with the potter; a blare of discord in a minor key announced an approaching procession; and there, in talk with the bangle-seller, stood the cause of these strange doings; keeping a curious eye on the mad Englishman, but otherwise frankly unconcerned.  Again there dawned on Roy the conviction that he had seen that face before.  It was not in India.  It was linked with the same sensations, in a milder form.  It would come in a moment....

It came.

Behind the slight, foppish figure, the eye of his mind saw suddenly—­not the sunlight and colour of Jaipur, but a stretch of grey-green sea, tawny cliffs, and sandy shore ...  St Rupert’s!  Of course, unmistakable:  the sullen mouth, the shifty eyes....

Instantly he went forward and said in English:  “I say—­excuse me—­but is your name Chandranath?”

The man started and stiffened.  “That is no matter to you.”

“Perhaps not.  Only ... you’re very like a boy who was one term at St Rupert’s School with me.”

“Well, I was at St Rupert’s.  A beastly hole——­”

He, too, spoke English, and scanned Roy’s face with narrowed eyes.  “Sinclair—­is it?  You tumbled down the cliff on to me—­and that Desmond fellow——?”

“Yes, I did.  Lucky for you,” Roy answered, stiffening in his turn.  But because of old days—­because this unpromising specimen of manhood had incidentally brought him and Desmond together, he held out his hand.  “’Fraid I lost my temper,” he said casually, for form’s sake.  “But you put my blood up.”

Chandranath’s fingers lay limply in his grasp.

“Still so sensitive——?  Then better to clear out of India.  I only pushed that crazy girl aside.  Englishmen knock and kick our people without slightest compunction.  Perhaps you are a tourist—­or new to this country?”

Words and manner set Roy’s nerves on edge; but he had been imprudent enough for one day.  “I’ve spent seven months on the Frontier in a cavalry Regiment,” he said; “but I only came to Jaipur yesterday.”

“Well, take my advice, Mr Sinclair, and leave these people alone.  They don’t want Englishmen making pretence of sentimental fuss over them.  They like much better to be pushed—­or even starved—­by their own jat.  You may not believe it.  But I belong to them.  So I know.”