There they lay until the sun declined far enough to lose a little of his power to scorch, and the camels bubbled to one another, thirstless, unwearied, dissatisfied, as the universal way of camels is, kneeling in a circle, rumps outward, each one resentful of the other’s neighborhood and, above all, disgruntled at man’s tyranny.

“By now,” laughed Yasmini, smoking one of Tess’s cigarettes in the shadow of the rock, “Gungadhura knows surely that my palace is empty and the bird has flown.  Ten dozen different people will have carried to him as many accounts of it, and each will have offered different explanation and advice!  I wonder what Jinendra’s fat priest has to say about it!  Gungadhura will have sent for him.  He would hardly ride to the priest through the streets, even in a carriage, with that love-token still raw and smarting with which I marked his face!  Two reliable reports will have reached him already as to which direction I have taken.  Yet the telegraph will have told him that I have not been seen to cross the border, and he will be wondering—­wondering.  May he wonder until his brains whirl round and sicken him!”

“What can he do?” suggested Tess.

“Do?  He can be spiteful.  He will enter my palace and remove the furniture, taking my mother’s legacies to his own lair—­where I shall recover them all within three weeks—­and his own beside!  I will be maharanee within the month!”

“Aren’t you a wee bit previous?” suggested Tess.

“Not I!  I never boast.  My mother taught me that.  Or when I do boast it is to put men off the scent.  I boasted once to Samson sahib when be offered to have me sent to college, telling him I was in the same school as himself and would learn the quicker.  He has wondered ever since then what I meant.  “Krishna!” she laughed impiously.  “I wonder what Samson sahib would not give to have me in his clutches at this minute!  Have I told you that Gungadhura plots with the Northwest tribes, and that the English know it?  No?  Didn’t I tell you?  Samson sahib would give me almost anything I asked, if he knew that it was I who told his government of Gungadhura’s plots; he would know then that with my knowledge to guide him he would be more than a match for Gungadhura, instead of a ball kicked this and that way between Gungadhura and the English!  Sometimes I almost think he would consent to try to make me maharanee!”

“Why not give him the chance then?”

“For two reasons.  The English too often desert their commissioners.  My sure way is better than his blundering attempts!  The other reason is an even better one, and you shall know it soon.  I think—­I do not know—­ I think, and I hope that the fat high priest of Jinendra is playing me false, and has gone to Samson sahib to make a bargain with him.  Samson sahib will consent to no bargains with that fat fool, if I am any judge of hucksters; but he will have his ears on end and his eyes sore with over-watchfulness from now forward!  Oh, I hope Jinendra’s priest has gone to him!  I tried to stir treachery in his mind by brow-beating him about the bargain that be tried to force from me!”