Kindly she turned to Prasad and invited him to accompany her to her private apartments. With intense chagrin, jealousy, and disappointment in his heart, he bowed haughtily, and pleaded as an excuse a pressing matter requiring his presence elsewhere. For a moment a look of pain crossed her face. But the music again sounded, the fans of state waved on high, the procession re-formed, and between the ranks of _salaaming_ nobles, the Rani retired from her first _Darbar_. Ahmad Khan had scarce time to adjust his plans to the unexpected course taken by the Rani. But in the appointment of his _protégé_, even to the lesser position of honor, he beheld a dagger by which to stab his rival's favor with the Rani, a fatal blow. Prasad strode toward the door, wrapt in gloomy, bitter feelings, without exchanging a parting salutation with anyone. Ahmad followed quickly and caught up with the Hindu noble before the latter had crossed the threshold. "Stay, good friend," he cried. "Thou art in a great hurry to shake the dust of the _Darbar_ hall from thy feet." "Aye," returned the other, with sullen ill humor. "And it will not be long before I shake the dust of the accursed city from my feet." "Why so"? asked Ahmad with assumed astonishment. "Why so," retorted Prasad angrily. "How canst thou ask, why so, after thy cajolery"? Ahmad shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly. "Friend, Prasad," he asserted. "I give thee my word, no man in the _Darbar_ was more astonished than Ahmad Khan when the Rani grasped the sword of state herself." For once he spoke the truth honestly. "Of that I make no complaint," retorted Prasad. "If the Rani so wished it, hers was the prerogative; though a strange one for a woman to assert." "Then to what hast thou taken so much offense"? asked the Mohammedan with apparent innocence. Prasad, in turn, regarded Ahmad with a look of astonishment. "Art thou so guileless, O Ahmad Khan"? he asked, "after all that has passed between us, not to imagine that I might be offended with the Rani's action, in giving to another--a stranger--that which she knew I besought of her favor." "Ah! as to that, my Prasad," returned Ahmad, pacifically, "there may have been many reasons in the Rani's mind, apart from the chief one given. She may have assumed thou wouldst not have cared for the lesser honor conferred upon Dost Ali--by the way a handsome fellow too; or, woman like, mind, I say no word against the beauty, wisdom, and courage of the Rani, she may have admired the gallant bearing of this fellow. A new favorite, perchance. Thou must remember, good Prasad, she is a woman as well as Rani, and turneth her gaze first upon one, then toward another." Prasad's brow scowled threateningly. "By God," he muttered. "She shall not treat me so."