anxious sensitiveness detected a shade of
mockery; but before he could define his feelings he reached a third door
guarded like the others, and was ushered in.

He found himself in a large chamber, its walls dazzling with barbaric
decoration--figures of Ganessa, a favorite idol of the Marathas, of
monstrous elephants, and peacocks with enormously expanded tails. The
hall was so crowded that his first confusion was redoubled. A path was
made through the throng as at a signal, and at the end of the room he saw
two men apart from the rest.

One of them, standing a little back from the other, was Diggle; the
other, a tall, powerful figure in raiment as gaudy as the painted
peacocks around him, his fingers covered with rings, a diamond blazing in
his headdress, was sitting cross-legged on a dais. Behind him, against
the wall, was an image of Ganessa, made of solid gold, with diamonds for
eyes, and blazing with jewels. At one side was his hookah, at the other a
two-edged sword and an unsheathed dagger. Below the dais on either hand
two fierce-visaged Marathas stood, their heads and shoulders covered with
a helmet, their bodies cased in a quilted vest, each holding a straight
two-edged sword. Between Angria and the idol two fan bearers lightly
swept the air above their lord's head with broad fans of palm leaves.

Desmond walked towards the dais, feeling woefully out of place amid the
brilliant costumes of Angria's court. Scarcely two of the Marathas were
dressed alike; some were in white, some in lilac, others in purple, but
each with ornaments after his own taste. Desmond had not had time before
leaving the Good Intent to smarten himself up, and he stood there a tall,
thin, sunburnt youth in dirty, tattered garments, doing his best to face
the assembly with British courage.

At the foot of the dais he paused and held out the captain's note. Diggle
took it in silence, his face wearing the smile that Desmond knew so well
and now so fully distrusted. Without reading it, he tore it in fragments
and threw them upon the floor, at the same time saying a few words to the
resplendent figure at his side.

Tulaji Angria was dark, inclined to be fat, and not unpleasant in
feature. But it was with a scowling brow that he replied to Diggle.
Desmond was no coward, but he afterward confessed that as he stood there
watching the two faces, the dark, lowering face of Angria, the smiling,
scarcely less swarthy face of Diggle, he felt hi