'Nothing easier!' replied the Secretary-to-Government, who was showing her round. 'Cut them to pattern with a foot-rule--they are only stuck in for the day!' He pulled up one as he spoke, showed it to her rootless, then stuck it in again with a laugh. 'It is a regular native dodge. They are A1 at making dream-palaces, you know. Curious, isn't it? that the mushroom should grow so well in India, the most conservative of countries; but cheap labour and cheap words are absolutely demoralising.' 'Stuck in! So they are,' echoed the gardening lady. 'Just a regular child's garden; but it looks well, doesn't it! Poor things!' she added, stooping to touch a pansy with the caressing touch of the flower-lover; 'but if they were only left alone for a time, you know, they would soon strike root.' 'Perhaps!' admitted the Secretary-to-Government dubiously, as they drifted off to the tea-table where Mrs. Chris Davenant--who had presented her bouquet with charming grace--was presiding, assisted by Chris in his frock-coat with a flower in his buttonhole. He was, in the eyes of many around him, at the pinnacle of prosperity, for the Lieutenant-Governor, as he drank his tea, was talking to him (as Vice-President); yet he did not look happy, perhaps because he could catch a glimpse outside the tent of Swâmi Viseshwar Nâth, standing apart from the ruck amid the little knot of high-caste Hindoos who had brought him there with blandishings and bribes, as ocular demonstration of the widespread sympathy and support the college was receiving from all classes of the community, and who had promised to be responsible for his bodily and spiritual immunity from defilement. By and by, Chris knew, he would have to reckon with that figure, whose brown, bare shaven head, and brown, bare legs, showed beyond a short salmon-pink shirt hung with a rope of big brown beads matching the tint of the skin. Such an inconceivable, incredible figure, seen behind that of Mrs. Carruthers in her last Paris frock! Yes! by and by Chris must make his choice. If it had only been for himself, that choice, it would have been easy; but it was for Naraini also---- _Naraini! Naraini! Naraini!_ The thought of her haunted him. Her very aloofness from such a scene as this, the impossibility of imagining her in any part of it, held him captive. No! there was no place here for such as she; not even in the tent where a few of the more emancipated wives, and sisters, and mothers of Shark Lane were, literally, on show to the elect; and whither Lady Arbuthnot was at that very moment being conducted by an elate but apologetic husband, who was saying with cheerful pomp-- 'You will find them very stupid, since they have as yet enjoyed small benefit from liberal education; but time will show.'