A man of indiscretion, and a diplomat, must have fireproof feelings.  As Tess had observed, Samson blenched distinctly, but he recovered in a second and put in practise some of that opportunism that was his secret pride, reflecting how a less finished diplomatist would have betrayed resentment at the snub from an inferior instead of affecting not to notice it at all.  As a student of human nature he decided that Tom Tripe’s pride was the point to take advantage of.

“You’re the very man I can trust,” he said.  “I’m glad we have had this talk.  If ever you receive a small white envelope marked r. s. in the left-hand bottom corner, see that the princess gets it, and say nothing.”

“Trust me, eh?” Tripe muttered as Samson walked away.  “You never trusted your own mother without you had a secret hold over her.  I wouldn’t trust you that far!” He spat among the flowers, for Tom could not pretend to real garden-party manners.  “And if she trusts you, letters or no letters, I’ll eat my spurs and saber cold for breakfast.”

Then, as if to console himself with proof that some one in the world did trust him thoroughly, Tom swaggered with a riding-master stride to where Tess stood talking with a Rajput prince, who had come late and threatened to leave early.  The prince had puzzled her by referring two or three times to his hurry, once even going so far as to say good-by, and then not going.  It was as if he expected her to know something that she did not know, and to give him a cue that he waited for in vain.  She felt he must think her stupid, and the thought made her every minute less at ease; but Tom’s approach, eyed narrowly by Samson for some reason, seemed to raise the Rajput’s spirits.

“If only my husband were here,” she said aloud, “but at the last minute—­ there was blasting, you know, and—­”

The prince—­he was quite a young one—­twenty-one perhaps—­murmured something polite and with eyes that smoldered watched Tom take a letter from his tunic pocket.  He handed it to Tess with quite a flourish.

“Some one must have dropped this, ma’am.”

The envelope was scented, and addressed in Persian characters.  She saw the prince’s eyes devour the thing—­saw him exchange glances with Tom Tripe—­and realized that Tom had rather deftly introduced her to another actor in the unseen drama that was going on.  Clearly the next move was hers.

“Is it yours, perhaps?” she asked.

Prince Utirupa Singh bowed and took the letter.  Samson with a look of baffled fury behind the monocle, but a smile for appearance’s sake, joined them at that minute and Utirupa seemed to take delight in so manipulating the sealed envelope that the commissioner could only see the back of it.

The prince was an extremely handsome young man, as striking in one way as Samson in another.  Polo and pig-sticking had kept him lean, and association with British officers had given him an air of being frankly at his ease even when really very far from feeling it.  He had the natural Oriental gift of smothering excitement, added to a trick learned from the West of aggressive self-restraint that is not satisfied with seeming the opposite of what one is, but insists on extracting humor from the situation and on calling attention to the humor.