Even so, Akbar Khân, listening with folded hands in a mantis-like attitude, his angles all crushed together into humility, wondered if he was standing on his head or his heels, as he heard Laila admit, gravely, that she was certainly, in a way, the head of the family, in that she possessed its land; but that, of course, Roshan was really the heir. That it had given her great gratification to see how thoroughly he had adopted English ways. That, of course, it would be impossible for him to marry an uneducated cow of a girl. Here, for a moment, she had relapsed to sincerity in order to remark that it must be impossible to love a person you had not seen, and that for her part, she knew in an instant if she was going to like or dislike people. If the latter, she tried never to see them, really, again. Then, remembering her part, she had resumed it hastily by saying that no doubt she would see more of her cousin,--who, by the way, was very nice-looking,--in the future, as he was quite in society. Old Mumtâza had hard work at this juncture to prevent herself from cracking all her finger-joints over the girl's head for luck, and wishing her a numerous offspring; while Akbar gave a gasp that was not all pleasure. He felt that he was being rushed, that the crisis might come before he was ready for it. At this rate, Pidar Narâyan would have no chance of dying. At this rate, Roshan Khân's castle in the air must topple over from sheer lack of foundation to such a lofty structure. As he trotted back beside Mumtâza's curtained _dhooli_ to that little parasite of a house against the palace wall, where he knew Roshan was waiting for the upshot of the interview, his one consolation was that bow-strings were out of fashion! In truth, there was no more restless man in Eshwara that night than Roshan Khân. The desire for this paradise had grown overwhelming, and as he listened to his grandmother, while Akbar pointed each triumphant appeal of the old lady's with a helpless "_Gereeb-pun-wâs_," his face grew pale with emotion; until, at the mention of his good looks and Laila's desire to see him, he turned fiercely to the go-between, and bade him fix a time; the sooner the better! Akbar felt inclined to tell the truth then. To admit that he had never breathed a word of Roshan's pretensions to the Miss-_sahiba_ and that, so far, the negotiations only existed in his own imaginings. But the look on Roshan's face--he had seen it often in his youth in connection with women, and sacks, and bow-strings--reduced him to protestations. He would do his best, he said, but with Pidar Narâyan it would be difficult to manage. Roshan strode about the little courtyard like a wild beast in a cage, biting his mustache, and thinking. Then he turned to the old phrase-monger.