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“I—I will try to like him, and help him—and do as he wishes,” she said, finding a strange difficulty in speaking.

“Of course. I knew you couldn’t do anything else,” said Colin, with such utter unconsciousness of the mental struggle she had just gone through that Penelope found his calm acquiescence almost maddening. She was glad to be saved the necessity of answering by the sudden entrance of Lady Haigh, who turned back to rebuke a servant for not having drawn up the blinds, and then discovered Colin.

“You here?” she cried. “Why, an orderly came up ten minutes ago to ask if you had come back, and I said you hadn’t. That old wretch Gobind Chand, the Nalapur Vizier, is to come here to-morrow instead of next week, and every one is as busy as possible. And you have been making Penelope cry! Well, I hope Major Keeling will give you the worst scolding you ever had in your life—for being so late, I mean, of course.”

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Gobind Chand, to whom Lady Haigh had alluded, was the Hindu Vizier of the Mohammedan state of Nalapur, the boundary of which marched with that of Khemistan on the north. It was no secret to the rulers of Khemistan that the consolidation of their power, of which Major Keeling’s settlement on the frontier was only one of the signs, could not be particularly welcome to the Amir Wilayat Ali. Formerly the country beyond his own border had been a happy hunting-ground, whither he could despatch any inconvenient Sardar or too successful soldier to raid and plunder until he was tired, reserving to himself the right of demanding a percentage of the spoil when the exile wished to return home. There were also pleasant little pickings derivable from the passage of caravans through the Akrab Pass, and the payment by weak tribes or unwarlike villages of what one side called tribute and the other blackmail, as the price of peace. These things gave the Amir a distinct pecuniary interest in the frontier district, and during Major Keeling’s first sojourn on the border, every effort had been made by the Nalapuris, short of actual war, to convince him that his presence was both undesired and useless. The lapse of time, however, and the activity of the Khemistan Horse, proved to the Amir that his unwelcome neighbour had come to stay, and whereas at first any raider had only to cross the border to receive asylum, Wilayat Ali now persisted in regarding the regiment as his private police. It was quite unnecessary for him to take any trouble to secure marauders when the Khemistan Horse had merely to come and seize them, and would do so whether he liked it or not, and he announced that he left the task of keeping order on both sides of the frontier to them, though this was not at all Major Keeling’s intention, which had been to secure the Amir’s active co-operation for the good of both states. To the English the ruler posed as an obliging friend, but when he wished to demand support or subsidies from his Sardars, he became a helpless victim coerced by superior force; and as he could play both parts without disturbing his own tranquillity by taking any steps whatever, he opposed a passive resistance to all projects of reform. Major Keeling had visions of a time when he would have leisure to arrange a conference at which various outstanding questions might be discussed, and the Amir brought to see what was expected of him; but in view of the Amir’s obvious preference for the present state of things, there seemed little prospect of this.