Beatrice Norma Elflida D'Eremao, presently her Highness Mrs. Dalel Beg, gave a little scream of rage, and stamped her tiny high-heeled shoes upon the floor. Mrs. Lily Violet D'Eremao, her mother, known in her time by many a _sobriquet_ until she settled down to sobriety and the education of a fair daughter, screamed too, in voluble abuse; but they were both quite helpless before the white-robed figure standing between them and the sunlight with a laugh on its red lips, which did not leave them when into the midst of the scene came Dalel Beg, got up in his dandy riding gear; only the folded pugree remaining to tell the tale of his birth. Perhaps because the ideas within the head it covered needed some such excuse for their existence. His face was hideous in its sheer malice, livid, not with passion or fear, but from that hatred of opposition which belonged to his race. And Chândni, recognising this, swept him a low salaam, graceful to the uttermost curve of each finger, a salaam which would have made Turveydrop die of envy, a salaam such as one sees once or twice in a lifetime. A minute before she might have given it in derision; now she yielded it to the lingering majesty in this pitiful representative of a long line of tyrants. 'Long life attend my lord,' she said, in those liquid tones of set ceremony, which her class pride themselves on acquiring. And even among them Chândni had a silver tongue: none near her, so the report ran. Dalel Beg's eyes saw, his ears heard. They would not refuse their wonted office, and yet as he took a step nearer, he raised the hunting crop he held. 'Go!' he cried. 'Go! Mohammed! Fuggu--turn this scum of the bazaars from the door.' 'Which scum of the bazaars?' she asked coolly. 'This--or that?' It was not scorn exactly, it was an indifferent contempt which seemed to leave no denial possible, and which held action arrested. 'Which is it to be, Mirza sahib?' she asked again, crossing swiftly to where the girl stood as if to measure her height against that small insignificant figure. 'There is not much to choose between us, except in the outside--and thou hast eyes!' 'Fuggu! Mohammed! Dittu! Scoundrels, turn her out! call the Kotwâl! Turn her out, I say!' shrieked the Mirza, fast loosing all dignity in a sort of animal admiration for this woman, who, he knew, would come back to him at a word. A word he dare not give,--which he did not wish to give, as yet. 'Softly! softly! oh, my brothers,' came that liquid voice. 'There is no need to touch Chândni the courtesan. The master hath his right, and I will go. I only ask a word, and sure my words are better for the ear than theirs.' It was incontestably true, for mother and daughter were now at the highest pitch of the Eurasian accent aggravated by hysterics, and the men stood uncertain, siding, every one of them, with that which was familiar. 'The word is this,' she went on boldly, 'I have done my part. Is there to be payment?'