“Child!” Tess protested.  “Do you realize that you’re dressed up like an extremely handsome man, and are kissing me through a window in the sight of all Sialpore?  How much reputation do you suppose I shall have left within the hour?

“There is only one kind of reputation worth the having,” laughed Yasmini; “that of knowing how to win!”

“But what’s this about poison?” Tess asked her.

“He always tries to poison me.  Now he will try more carefully.”

“You must take care!  How will you prevent him?”

By quite unconscious stages Tess found herself growing concerned about this young truant princess.  One minute she was interested and amused.  The next she was conscious of affection.  Now she was positively anxious about her, to use no stronger word.  Nor had she time to wonder why, for Yasmini’s methods were breathless.

“I shall eat very often at your house.  And then you shall take a journey with me.  And after that the great pig Gungadhura shall be very sorry he was born, and still more sorry that be tried to poison me!”

“Tell me, child, haven’t you a mother?”

“She died a year ago.  If there is such a place as hell she has gone there, of course, because nobody is good enough for Heaven.  But I am not Christian and not Hindu, so hell is not my business.”

“What are you, then?”

“I am Yasmini.  There is nobody like me.  I am all alone, believing only what I know and laughing at the priests.  I know all the laws of caste, because that is necessary if you are to understand men.  And I have let the priests teach me their religion because it is by religion that they govern people.  And the priests,” she laughed, “are much more foolish than the fools they entice and frighten.  But the priests have power.  Gungadhura is fearfully afraid of them.  The high priest of the temple of Jinendra pretends to him that he can discover where the treasure is hidden, so Gungadhura makes daily offerings and the priest grows very fat.”

“Who taught you such good English?” Tess asked her; for there was hardly even a trace of foreign accent, nor the least hesitation for a word.

“Father Bernard, a Jesuit.  My mother sent for him, and he came every day, year after year.  He had a little chapel in Sialpore where a few of the very low-caste people used to go to pray and make confessions to him.  That should have given him great power; but the people of this land never confess completely, as he told me the Europeans do, preferring to tell lies about one another rather than the truth about themselves.  I refused to be baptized because I was tired of him, and after my mother died and she was burned with the Hindu ritual, he received orders to go elsewhere.  Now there is another Jesuit, but he only has a little following among the English, and can not get to see me because I hide behind the purdah.  The purdah is good—­if you know how to make use of it and not be ruled by it.”