promise to load
all the jewels you can choose out of the treasure-house on you. Then,
perhaps, you may, remember that I said 'a throne is better than a grave,
sahiba.' Or else--"

"Or else what, Jaimihr-sahib?" She reined again and wheeled about and
faced him--pale-trembling a little--looking very small and frail beside
him on his great war-horse, but not flinching under his gaze for a
single second.

"Or else, sahiba--I think you saw me slay the Maharati? Do you think
that I would stop at anything to accomplish what I had set out to do?
See, sahiba--there is a little blood there on your jacket! Let that be
for a pledge between us--for a sign--or a token of my oath that on the
day I am Maharajah Howrah, you are Maharanee--mistress of all the jewels
in the treasure-house!"

She shuddered. She did not look to find the blood; she took his word for
that, if for nothing else.

"I wonder you dare tell me that you plot against your brother!" That was
more a spoken thought than a statement or a question.

"I would be very glad if you would warn my brother!" he answered her;
and she knew like a flash, and on the instant, that what he said was
true. She had been warned before she came to bear no tales to any one.
No Oriental would believe the tale, coming from her; the Maharajah would
arrest her promptly, glad of the excuse to vent his hatred of Christian
missionaries. Jaimihr would attempt a rescue; it was common knowledge
that he plotted for the throne. There would be instant civil war,
in which the British Government would perforce back up the alleged
protector of a defenseless woman. There would be a new Maharajah; then,
in a little while, and in all likelihood, she would have disappeared
forever while the war raged. There would be, no doubt, a circumstantial
story of her death from natural causes.

She did not answer. She stared back at him, and he smiled down at her,
twisting at his mustache.

"Think!" he said, nodding. "A throne, sahiba, is considerably better
than a grave!" Then he wheeled like a sudden dust-devil and decamped
in a cloud of dust, followed at full pelt by his clattering escort. She
watched their horses leap one after the other the corpse of the Maharati
that lay by the corner where it fell, and she saw the last of them go
clattering, whirling up the street through the bazaar. The old hag rose
out of a shadow and trotted after her again as she turned and rode on,
pale-faced and crying now a little,