High counsel indeed!  Good to hear; hard to act upon.  Nevil Sinclair—­knowing they would act upon it—­let out an involuntary sigh and tightened his hold of the gentle, adoring woman, whose spirit towered so far above his own.

“Lilamani—­you’ve won,” he said, after a perceptible pause.  “You deserve to win—­and Roy will bless you.  It’s the high privilege of Mothers, I suppose, to conjure the moon out of heaven for their sons.”

“Sometimes, by doing so, they nearly break their hearts,” she answered very low.

He stooped and kissed her.  “Keep yours intact—­for me.  I shall need it.”  Her fingers closed convulsively on his—­“England will seem sort of empty—­without Roy.  Is he dead keen on going this autumn?”

“Yes—­I am afraid.  A little because of young impatience.  A little because he is troubled over Dyan; and he has much influence.  There are so many now in India dragged two ways.”

Nevil sighed again.  “Bless the boy!  It’s an undeniable risk.  And what the family will say to our Midsummer madness, God knows!  Jane can be trusted to make the deuce of a row.  And we can’t even smooth matters by telling her of our private precaution——­”

“No—­not one little word.”

Lilamani sat upright, a gleam of primitive hate in her eyes.

Nevil smiled, in spite of secret dismay.  “You implacable little sinner!  Can’t you ever forgive her like a Christian?”

“No—­not ever.”  The tense quiet of her tone carried conviction.  “Not only far-off things, I can never forget—­nearly killing me and—­and Roy.  But because she is always stabbing at me with sharp words and ugly thoughts.  She cannot ever forgive that I am here—­that I make you happy, which she could not believe.  She is angry to be put in the wrong by mere Hindu wife——­” She paused in her vehement rush of speech:  saw the look in Nevil’s face that recalled an earlier day; and anger vanished like a light blown out.  “King of me—­I am sorry.  Only—­it is true.  And she is Christian born.  But I—­down in my deepest places I am still—­Rajputni.  Just the same as after twenty-three years of English wife, I am still in my heart—­like the ‘Queen who stood erect!’”

On the word she rose and confronted him, smiling into his troubled eyes; grace of girlhood and dignity of womanhood adorably mingled in her pose.

“Who was she?” Nevil asked, willingly lured from thoughts of Jane.

“Careless one!  Have you forgotten the story of my Wonder-Woman—­how a King, loving his Queen with all his soul, bowed himself in ecstasy, and ‘took the dust off her feet’ in presence of other wives who, from jealousy, cried:  ’Shameless one, lift up the hands of the King to your head.’  But the Queen stood erect, smiling gladly.  ’Not so:  for both feet and head are my Lord’s.  Can I have aught that is mine?’”

The swiftness of transition, the laughing tenderness of her eyes so moved him—­and so potent in her was the magical essence of womanhood—­that he, Sir Nevil Sinclair, Baronet, of Bramleigh Beeches, came near to taking the dust of her feet in very deed.