rther
maddened the discomfited Dyan by saying, with her very kindest smile:
"I'm so sorry. Don't be vexed."

Vexed! The bloodless word was insult piled on injury. All the pride and
passion of his race flamed in him. Without answering her smile or her
plea, he drew abruptly away from her; stepped out of the punt and went
for his stroll alone.

CHAPTER II.

"Who knows what days I answer for to-day...?
Thoughts yet unripe in me, I bend one way...."
--ALICE MEYNELL.

While Broome and Lady Despard were concerned over indications of a
critical corner for Roy, there was none--save perhaps Aruna--to be
concerned for the dilemma of Dyan Singh, Rajput--half savage, half
chivalrous gentleman; idealist in the grain; lover of England and India;
and now--fiercely, consumedly--lover of Tara Despard, with her Indian
name and her pearl-white English skin and the benign sunshine of England
in her hair.

It is the danger-point for the young Indian overseas, unused to free
intercourse with women other than his own; saddled, very often, with a
girl-wife in the background--the last by no means a matter of course in
these enlightened days. In Dyan Singh's case the safeguard was lacking.
His mother being dead, he had held his own against a rigidly
conventional grandmother, and insisted on delaying the inevitable till
his education was complete. Waxing bolder still, he had demanded the
same respite for Aruna; a far more serious affair. For months they had
waged a battle of tongues and temper and tears, with
Mataji--high-priestess of the Inside--with the family matchmaker and the
family _guru_, whom to offend was the unforgiveable sin. Had he not
power to call down upon an entire household the curse of the gods?

More than once Aruna had been goaded to the brink of surrender; till her
brother grew impatient and spurned her as a weakling. Yet her ordeal had
been sharper than his own. For him, mere moral suasion and threats of
ostracism. For her, the immemorial methods of the Inside; forbidden by
Sir Lakshman, but secretly applied, when flagrant obstinacy demanded
drastic measures. So neither Dyan nor his grandfather had suspected that
Aruna, for days together, had suffered the torment of Tantalus--food set
before her so mercilessly peppered that a morsel would raise blisters on
her lips and tongue; water steeped in salt; the touch of the
'fire-stick' applied where her skin was tende