“Have you had breakfast?”

He made a wry face.

“The old story, Tom?”

“The old story, ma’am.  A hair of the dog that bit me is all the breakfast I could swallow.”

“I suppose if I don’t give you one now you’ll have two later?”

He nodded.  “I must.  One now would put me just to rights and I’d eat at noon.  Times when I’m savage with myself, and wait, I have to have two or three before I can stomach lunch.”

She offered him a basket chair and beckoned Chamu.

“Brandy and soda for the sahib.”

“Thank you, ma’am!” said the soldier piously.

“Where’s your dog, Tom?”

“Behaving himself, I hope, ma’am, out there in the sun by the gate.”

“Call him.  He shall have a bone on the veranda.  I want him to feel as friendly here as you do.”

Tom whistled shrilly and an ash-hued creature, part Great Dane and certainly part Rampore, came up the path like a catapulted phantom, making hardly any sound.  He stopped at the foot of the steps and gazed inquiringly at his master’s face.

“You may come up.”

He was an extraordinary animal, enormous, big-jowled, scarred, ungainly and apparently aware of it.  He paused again on the top step.

“Show your manners.”

The beast walked toward Tess, sniffed at her, wagged his stern exactly once and retired to the other end of the veranda, where Chamu, hurrying with brandy gave him the widest possible berth.  Tess looked the other way while Tom Tripe helped himself to a lot of brandy and a little soda.

“Now get a big bone for the dog,” she ordered.

“There is none,” the butler answered.

“Bring the leg-of-mutton bone of yesterday.”

“That is for soup today.”

“Bring it!”

Chamu was standing between Tom Tripe and the Rajputni, with his back to the latter; so nobody saw the hand that slipped something into the ample folds of his sash.  He departed muttering by way of the steps and the garden, and the dog growled acknowledgment of the compliment.

Tess’s Rajput guest continued to say nothing; but made no move to go.  Introduction was inevitable, for it was the first rule of that house that all ranks met there on equal terms, whatever their relations elsewhere.  Tom Tripe had finished wiping his mustache, and Tess was still wondering just how to manage without betraying the sex of the other or the fact that she herself did not yet know her visitor’s name, when Chamu returned with the bone.  He threw it to the dog from a safe distance, and was sniffed at scornfully for his pains.

“Won’t he take it?” asked Tess.

“Not from a black man.  Bring it here, you!”

The great brute, with a sidewise growl and glare at the butler that made him sweat with fright, picked up the bone and, at a sign from his master, laid it at the feet of Tess.