* * * * *

There were only three outsiders that night:  the State Engineer and two British officers in the Maharajah’s employ.  But they sat down sixteen to dinner; and, very shortly after, came three others in the persons of Dyan and Sir Lakshman Singh, with his distinguished friend Mahomed Inayat Khan, from Hyderabad.  Nothing Thea enjoyed better than getting a mixed batch of men together and hearing them talk—­especially shop; for then she knew their hearts were in it.  They were happy.

And to-night, her chance assortment was amazingly varied, even for India:—­Army, ‘Political,’ Civil; P.W.D. and Native States; New India, in the person of Dyan; and not least, the ‘medical mish’ pair; an element rich in mute inglorious heroism, as the villagers and ’depressed classes’ of India know.  She took keen delight in the racial interplay of thought and argument, with Roy, as it were, for bridge-builder between.  How he would relish the idea!  He seemed very much in the vein this evening, especially since his grandfather arrived.  He was clearly making an impression on Mr Mayne and Inayat Khan; and a needle-prick of remorse touched her heart.  For Aruna, annexed by Captain Martin’s subaltern, was watching him too, when she fancied no one was looking; and Lance, attentively silent, was probably laying deep plans for his capture.  A wicked shame—­but still...!

As a matter of fact, Lance, too, was troubled with faint compunction.  He had never seen Roy in this kind of company, nor in this particular vein.  And, reluctantly, he admitted that it did seem rather a waste of his mentally reviving vigour hauling him back to the common round of tennis and dances and polo—­yes, even sacred polo—­when he was so dead keen on this infernal agitation business, and seemed to know such a deuce of a lot about it all.

Lance himself knew far too little; and was anxious to hear more, for the intimate, practical reason that he was not quite happy about his Sikh troop.  The Pathan lot were all right.  But the Sikhs—­his pride and joy—­were being ‘got at’ by those devils in the City.  And, if these men could be believed, ‘things’ were going to be very much worse; not only ‘down country,’ but also in the Punjab, India’s sure shield against the invader.  To a Desmond, the mere suggestion of the Punjab turning traitor was as if one impugned the courage of his father or the honour of his mother; so curiously personal is India’s hold upon the hearts of Englishmen who come under her spell.

So Lance listened intently, if a little anxiously, to all that Thea’s ‘mixed biscuits’ had to say on that absorbing subject.  For to-night shop held the field:  if that could be called shop, which vitally concerned the fate of England and India, and of British dominion in the East.