“Tomorrow night you shall see another spectacle.  Once, when Rajputana was a veritable land of kings, and not a province tricked and conquered by the English, there was a custom that each great king held a durbar, to which princes came from everywhere, in order that the king’s daughter might choose her own husband from among them.  The custom died, along with other fashions that were good.  The priests killed it, knowing that whatever fettered women would increase their sway.  But I will revive it—­ as much as may be, with the English listening to every murmur of their spies and the great main not yet thrown.  I have no father, but I need none.  I am a king’s daughter!  Tomorrow night I will single out my husband, and name him by the title under which I shall marry him—­in the presence of such men of royal blood as can be trusted with a secret for a day or two!  There are many who will gladly see the end of Gungadhura!  But I must try to sleep—­I have hardly slept an hour.  If a maid were awake to sing to me—­but they sleep like the dead after the camel-ride, and Hasamurti, who sings best, is weariest of all.”

“Suppose I sing to you?” said Tess.

“No, no; you are tired too.”

“Nonsense!  It’s nearly morning.  I have slept for hours.  Let me come and sing to you.”

“Can you?  Will you?  I am full of gladness, and my brain whirls with a thousand thoughts, but I ought to sleep.”

So Tess went to Yasmini’s room, and sat beneath the punkah crooning Moody and Sankey hymns and darky lullabies, until Yasmini dropped into the land of dreams.  Then, listening to the punkah’s regular soft swing, she herself fell forward on her arms, half-resting on the bed, half on the chair, until Hasamurti crept in silently and, laughing, lifted her up beside Yasmini and left her there until the two awoke near noon, wondering, in each other’s arms.

Chapter Fourteen

He who is most easily persuaded is perhaps a fool, for the world is full of fools, and it is dangerous to deal with them.  But perhaps he is a man who sees his own advantage hidden in the folds of your proposal; and that is dangerous too. —­Eastern Proverb

“Acting on instructions from Your Highness!”

It tickled Gungadhura’s vanity to have an Englishman in his employ; but Tom Tripe never knew from one day to another what his next reception would be.  On occasion it would suit the despot’s sense of humor to snub and slight the veteran soldier of a said-to-be superior race; and he would choose to do that when there was least excuse for it.  On the other hand, he recognized Tom as almost indispensable; he could put a lick and polish on the maharajah’s troops that no amount of cursing and coaxing by their own officers accomplished.  Tom understood to a nicety that drift of the Rajput’s martial mind that caused each sepoy to believe himself the equal of any other Rajput man, but permitted him to tolerate fierce disciplining by an alien.