life.  But the gods, it seemed, were jealous of a relation too nearly perfect for mortal man.  So Rama, eldest son, and Lilamani, beloved daughter, had been taken, while the estranged wife was left.  Remained the grandchildren, in whom centred all his hope and pride.  So far as the dividing miles and years would permit, he had managed to keep in close touch with Roy.  But the fact remained that England had first claim on Lilamani’s children; and Rama’s were tossed on the troubled waters of transition.

As for India herself—­sacred Mother-land—­her distraught soul seemed more and more at the mercy of the voluble, the half-baked, the disruptive, at home and abroad.

Himself, steeped in the threefold culture of his country—­Vedantic, Islamic, and European—­he came very near the prevailing ideal of composite Indian nationality.  Yet was he not deceived.  In seventy years of life, he had seen intellectual India pass through many phases, from ardent admiration of the West and all its works, to no less ardent denunciation.  And in these days he saw too clearly how those same intellectuals—­with catchwords, meaningless to nine-tenths of her people—­were breaking down, stone by stone, their mighty safeguard of British administration.  Useless to protest.  Having ears, they heard not.  Having eyes, they saw not.  The spirit of destruction seemed abroad in all the earth.  After Germany—­Russia.  Would it be India next?  He knew her peoples well enough to fear.  He also knew them well enough to hope.  But of late, increasingly, fear had prevailed.  His shrewd eye discerned, in every direction, fresh portents of disaster—­a weakened executive, divided counsels, and violence that is the offspring of both.  His own Maharaja, he thanked God, was of the old school, loyal and conservative:  his face set like a flint against the sedition-monger in print or person.  And as concessions multiplied and extremists waxed bolder, so the need for vigilance waxed in proportion....

But to-day his mind had room for one thought only—­the advent of Roy; legacy of her, his vanished Jewel of Delight.

A message from the Residency had told of the boy’s arrival, of his hope to announce himself in person that evening; and now, on a low divan, the old man sat awaiting him with a more profound emotion at his heart than the mere impatience of youth.  But the impassive face under the flesh-pink turban betrayed no sign of disturbance within.  The strongly-marked nose and eyebones might have been carved in old ivory.  The snowy beard, parted in the middle, was swept up over his ears; and the eyes were veiled.  An open book lay on his knee.  But he was not reading.  He was listening for the sound of hoofs, the sound of a voice....

The two had not met for five years:  and in those years the boy had proved the warrior blood in his veins; had passed through the searching test of a bitter loss.  Together, they could speak of her—­gone from them; yet alive in their hearts for evermore.  Seen or unseen, she was the link that kept them all united, the pivot on which their lives still turned.  There had been none with whom he could talk of her since she went....