licity and beauty.

"No wonder they call her the Rose Queen," Barlow was communing with
himself. For the oval face with its olive skin, as fair as a Kashmiri
girl's, was certainly beautiful. The black hair was smoothed back from
a wide low forehead, after the habit of the Mahratti women; the prim
simplicity of this seeming to add to the girlish effect. A small
white-and-gold turban, even with its jauntiness, seemed just the very
thing to check the austere simplicity. The girl's eyes, like Ajeet's,
were the eyes of some one unafraid, of one born to a caste that felt
equality. When they turned to those who sat in the brake they were
calmly meditative; they were the eyes of a child, modest; but with the
unabashed confidence of youth.

Elizabeth, perhaps unreasonably, for the three of them sat so close
together in the brake, fancied that the Gulab's gaze constantly picked
out the handsome Captain Barlow.

An imp touched Nana Sahib, and he said: "I'd swear there was Rajput
blood in that girl. If I knew of some princess having been stolen I'd
say she stood yonder. The eyes are simply ripping; baby eyes, that,
when roused, assist in driving a knife under a man's fifth rib. I've
seen a sambhur doe with just such eyes cut into ribbons a Rampore hound
with her sharp hoofs."

"Well, Prince," Elizabeth said, "I suppose you know the women of this
land better than either Captain Barlow or myself, and you're probably
right, for I see in a belt at her waist the jewelled hilt of a dagger."

Nana Sahib laughed: "My dear Miss Hodson, I never play with edged
tools, and Captain--"

But Nana Sahib's raillery was cut short by a small turmoil as the
bleating goat of sacrifice was dragged forward to a stone daubed with
vermillion upon which rested a small black alabaster image of Kali;
while a _guru_, with sharpened knife, hung near like a falcon over a
quivering bird. Three times the goat's head was thrust downward in
obeisance to the black goddess; there was a flash of steel in the
sunlight, and hot blood gushed forth, to dye with its crimson flood the
base of the idol.

A Bagree darted forward and with a stroke of his _tulwar_ clipped the
neck from a pitcher and held it beneath the gurgling flood till it was
filled.

From where Elizabeth sat she looked across the shoulder of Nana Sahib
as they watched the sacrifice; she saw him quiver and lean forward, his
shoulders tip as though he would spring from the brake. His face h