Leaving Bahram Khan to look at affairs in this new light, Jehanara established herself again in her corner, gazing fixedly into the hot coals. Both her life and that of Narayan Singh were at stake, and she knew it; and she had no desire to die. Six years before she had played a desperate game with Bahram Khan, conscious that in him she faced an opponent as cunning and as faithless as herself. The conditions were unequal, for she staked far more than he did, and he won, possibly because her sense of the risk she was running had robbed her of the perfect coolness necessary to ensure success. He had not married her, even by Mohammedan rites, and nothing short of full legal recognition could have vindicated in the eyes of her own people the course she had pursued. Robbed of her anticipated triumph, she made no attempt to escape the consequences, but set herself by every means in her power to obtain that ascendency over the Prince’s mind which she had failed to gain over his heart. Fresh failures and unspeakable mortifications had awaited her. The women of the household, from the beautiful little Ethiopian bride to whom was awarded the position Jehanara had intended for herself, to the humblest hill-girl who had been kidnapped to become at once a slave and a Muslimeh, saw to it that she ate the bread of bitterness; but in spite of taunts and revilings she kept the one end in view until her persistence was crowned with complete success. Bahram Khan would listen to no advice but hers, having learnt by experience that his confidence in her was justified. The intrigue by which first the Commissioner, and then the Viceroy, had been convinced of his wrongs, was of her devising, and had proved so successful as to convince her that had it not been for Dick’s opposition, she would already have seen Bahram Khan established as his uncle’s heir. It followed that her hatred for Dick, heightened by his cavalier treatment of herself, was at least as strong as that of the disappointed claimant. As she sat brooding over the charcoal at this moment, there was a cruel light in her eyes while she ran hastily over the points of the scheme which had sprung full-grown into her mind when Bahram Khan accused her of treachery. “Highness,” she said at last, and Bahram Khan propped himself up on his cushions with a muttered growl, while the trembling Narayan Singh appeared to take fresh interest in life, “this perfidy of the Kumpsioner Sahib’s provides thee with what was most needed, a means of involving the Amir Sahib in our plans. Nay, through this treachery, with the blessing of Heaven, thy servants will yet behold thee seated upon his throne, with the sanction of the Sarkar.” “Wonderful!” cried the Prince, with gleaming eyes. “Go on.”