“And since, my Lords, in olden days it happened often that a Rajput woman held and buttressed up her husband’s throne, honoring him and Rajputana with her courage and her wit, and daring even in the arts of war, so now:  this prince shall have his throne by woman’s wit.  Before another full moon rises he shall sit throned in the palace of his ancestors; and ye who love royal Rajasthan shall answer whether I chose wisely, in the days to come!”

They answered then and there to the utmost of their lungs.  And while the hall resounded to the crash and clangor of applause she let go Utirupa’s hand, bowed low to him, and vanished through the gilded door in the midst of her attendant women.

For two hours after that she was the center of a vortex of congratulation—­ questions—­whisperings—­laughter and advice, while the women flocked about her and she introduced Tess to them one by one.  Tess, hardly understanding a word of what was said to her, was never made so much of in her life, sharing honors with Yasmini, almost as much a novelty as she—­a Western woman, spirited behind the purdah by the same new alchemy that made a girl of partly foreign birth, and so without caste in the Hindu sense of it, revive a royal custom with its antecedents rooted in the very rocks of time.  It was a night of breathless novelty.

There were the inevitable sweetmeats—­the inevitable sugared drinks.  Then the elephants again, and torches under the mysterious trees, with a sabered escort plunging to the right and left.  The same torch-lit faces peering from the village doors and walls; and at last the gate again in the garden wall, and a bolt shot home, and silence.  Then: 

“Did I do well?” Yasmini asked, leaning at last on Tess.  “Oh, my sister!  Without you there to lend me courage I had failed!”

Chapter Seventeen

How about the door!  Did somebody lock it? 
“I,” said the Chairman, “had the key in my pocket.” 
Who shut the windows?  “I,” said the vice. 
“I shut the window, it seemed to me wise.” 
“I,” said the clerk, “looked under the table
And out on the balcony under the gable.” 
Then who let the secret out?  Who overheard? 
Maybe a mouse, or the flies, or a bird!

“Suppose I lock the door?”

Tom Tripe felt like a new man, and his whiskers crackled with self-satisfaction.  For one thing, his dog Trotters was back again—­sore-footed, it was true, and unable at present to follow him on his rounds; and rather badly scratched where a leopard must have missed his spring on the moonlit desert; but asleep in the stable litter, on the highroad to recovery.

Tom had ridden that morning, first to Dick Blaine up at the gold mine, because he was a friend and needed good news of his wife; then across the bridge to Samson, straightening out the crumpled letter from Yasmini as he rode, and chuckling to himself at the thought of mystifying the commissioner.  And it all worked out the way he hoped, even to the offer of a drink—­good brandy—­Hennesey’s Three Star.