Aziza Nurmahal knew exactly what her father would have done under the same circumstances: just a gesture and a word to the executioner to give “one hundred and fifteen sticks to this pig of an infidel Babu who dares raise his voice in the presence of his betters.” For he had been a rough man whose entire philosophy of government had been a rough fact reduced to yet rougher order and who had always surrendered completely to the gods of his enormous, pagan resolution. She, on the other hand, had been taken direct from the zenana to the throne room. She had not yet learned how to bury the poetry and the enthusiasms of her soft youth beneath the stony drag and smother of life.
She felt the contemptuous enmity of the crowd.
Again she stammered. Again there was a ripple of laughter and whispered, malign words; the Sheik-ul-Islam quoting with pontifical unction that power without wisdom was like a cloud without rain, Gulabian advancing artlessly that it is impossible to clap with one hand alone, and the governor of the eastern marches pleasantly completing the circle of Oriental metaphors by mentioning that some people were on horseback—while their brains walked on foot.
And then, suddenly, while the little princess eyes dimmed with welling tears, the old nurse rose and pointed a crooked, withered thumb at Chandra.
“Thou art a Babu,” she said in an even, passionless voice, “and tell me: who would believe a Babu—who would keep meat on trust with a jackal?”
The next moment, while the Babu collapsed into an obese heap, she faced the commander-in-chief,
