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rag.' So they're on the _qui vive._ He'll count that one up against me: but I'll manage to survive." And Dyan, in the privacy of his heart, had felt distinctly relieved. Not that he lacked the courage of his race; but, having seen the man for years, as it were, through a magnifying lens, he could not, all in a moment, see him for the thing he was:--dangerous as a snake, yet swift as a snake to wriggle out of harm's way. He had not been backward, however, in awakening his grandfather to purdah manoeuvres. Strictly in private--he told his cousin--there had been ungoverned storms of temper, ungoverned abuse of Roy, who was suspected by 'the Inside' of knowing too much and having undue influence with the old man. 'The Inside,' he gathered, had from early days been jealous of the favourite daughter and all her belongings. Naturally, in Dyan's opinion, his sister ought to marry; and the sooner the better. Perhaps he had been unwise, after all, insisting on postponement. By now she would have been settled in her lawful niche instead of making trouble with this craze for hospital nursing and keeping outside caste. Not surprising if she shrank from living at home, after all she had been through. Better for them both, perhaps, to break frankly with orthodox Hinduism and join the Brahma Samaj. As Roy knew precisely how much--or rather, how little--Aruna liked working in the wards, he suffered a pang at the pathos of her innocent guile. And if Dyan had his own suspicions, he kept them to himself. He also kept to himself the vitriolic outpouring which he had duly found awaiting him at Jaipur. It contained too many lurid allusions to 'that conceited, imperialistic half-caste cousin of yours'; and Roy might resent the implied stigma as much as Dyan resented it for him. So he tore up the effusion, intended for the eye of Roy, merely remarking that it had enraged him. It was beneath contempt. Roy would like to have seen it, all the same; for he knew himself quicker than Dyan at reading between the lines. The beggar would not hit back straight. But given the chance, he might try it on some other way--witness the pistol-shot in the arcade; a side light--or a side flash--on the pleasant sort of devil he was! Back in the Jaipur Residency, in the garden that was 'almost England,' back in his good familiar tweed coat and breeches, the whole Delhi interlude seemed strangely theatrical and unreal; more like a vivid dream than an exper
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