"But his semi-majesty was cautious.

"It was characteristic of him that his mature reflections should
frequently place his impulse under obligations; a condition that had
resulted in many a salutary compromise with some proposed moral abandon.

"Should he show the slightest countenance to the native troops in the
present emergency, the record of such an attitude would constitute
anything but a passport to the continued consideration of the British
Government, upon whose sufferance he not only enjoyed his present
magnificent residence, but the acknowledgment of his right of succession
as well.

"The prince was not yet inclined to believe that the Sepoys could make
headway against his detested patrons.

"However, with his mind stimulated by the hazard of the prospect, this
picturesque heir-apparent, who had assured himself, since his perusal of
the unaccountably delivered missive, that Ram Lal had no intention of
making his appearance that day, at least, returned to the apartment
where his morning repast awaited him, which he dispatched with the
preoccupied impersonality of a savant who consults his timepiece in
order to determine the temperature.

"Advised of the fact that he had finished by a disposition to ignore his
remaining privileges, the prince, as if to pursue the direction of the
unseeing gaze which he projected into space, rose slowly, and with that
moody deliberation which is so often the outward manifestation of an
ignoble as well as an elevated determination, proceeded to the silken
arras and disappeared from view between the folds.

"Quickly he traversed the passageway leading to the apartments of Lal
Lu; and in response to a light touch upon the gong the same servile
apparition emerged and vanished, with cringing obedience, down the
passage.

"With a gleam in his eyes, which might have caused a magistrate to
reflect or a moralist to anticipate, that was both sinister and
engaging, eager and speculative, the prince, with a gesture that was not
without its impatient majesty and lithe impressiveness, swept aside the
curtains which guarded the entrance to the small ante-room and stepped
within."

* * * * *

As the Sepoy reached this point of the narrative, arranged, perhaps,
with shrewd malice to tantalize his eager listener, an expression of
libidinous expectation and depraved absorption deepened upon the
countenance of the latter, who, like an animal depriv