Komadan Rukn-ud-din had already asked leave to pay his respects to him.
In the interval between the review and the banquet which was to wind up
the day, therefore, a gorgeous band of horsemen thronged the approach
to Gerrard's quarters, and Rukn-ud-din presented his officers, the
chief of whom was the Rajput Amrodh Chand, who was a cousin of the
Rani's. Gerrard touched the sword-hilts they held forth, entertained
them with coffee and conversation of a strictly non-committal
character, and then withdrew from the verandah into his office for a
few moments' confidential talk with their leader.

"You are surely not one of the Nawab's Komadans, Rukn-ud-din?" he asked
him eagerly.

"Nay, sahib. I still eat the salt of the widow of my master."

"Then it is the Rani Sahiba who is entertaining these troops of yours?
But is she not far away?"

"So far away as to be between this place and the river that parts it
from Agpur, sahib."

"This is very serious." It was quite certain that Mr James Antony
would not approve of the Rani's taking up her residence so close to her
former capital, when she was supposed to be at Benares. "You know that
I must report it to the Resident Sahib at Ranjitgarh?"

"Your honour will do as it is decreed you should do," said the
Mohammedan tranquilly.

"But what is her Highness's object?"

"To avenge the blood of her house, sahib. She devotes herself wholly
to the practice of austerities, after the manner of the idolaters. The
women say that to behold her is to behold the corpse of one that has
died in famine-time."

"You cannot mean that she is wholly destitute? Yet what is she living
upon? Her allowance has not been paid to her, because she has not
subscribed to the conditions upon which it was granted."

"Her Highness will never subscribe to those conditions, sahib. She
will neither receive money at the hand of the murderer, nor covenant to
bequeath him a single anna that she possesses. For her maintenance,
she received from Antni Sahib's brother at Ranjitgarh the ten thousand
rupees your honour carried with you to Adamkot from the treasury, and
of his grace he added to them, by way of an advance, a sum sufficient
to enable her to perform her pilgrimage to Kashi." Gerrard suppressed
a smile when he realised that James Antony's eagerness to avert
political complications by getting the Rani safely out of Granthistan
had thus over-reached itself by giving her the means of remaining