For the assemblage had gathered. The chandeliers were lit, and the myriad-hued flash of their prisms hid the dust, hid the cobwebs, and gave a new brilliance to the mourners gathered in their appointed places. The tourists were gone now. These were his own people. They were waiting for him. As he paused, a new arrival entering by a side door paused also--paused right in front of him before the glass case containing the last king's turban of state. So, after _salaam_-ing to it profoundly, sought the square belonging to his rank. Jehân gave a low savage laugh of satisfaction, and passed on to his. Here it was the first! Here, at any rate, honour was his! Burkut, watching him swagger over to his prayers, smiled. If this sort of thing went on, he would have his choice of fostering a real conspiracy or denouncing it. That was the best of having an open mind; at least two courses were always open to one. So, when the dirge was sung, he went and paid his respects to one or two officials, and then, the time for gossip and kite-flying having arrived, joined the worst company in Nushapore, where he talked sedition and backed the paper nothingnesses as they dipped and rose an inch or two, only to fall again, until the dusk blotted their gay colours from the sky. But below the bastioned river wall abutting on the railway bridge, which was the favourite meeting-place of kite-flyers, the dusk brought out other colours to take their place; close at hand and farther off, half-way across the river, and right upon its farther shore, came red and green lights, steady as stars. Until, in the far distance, a red changed to green, the signals which had stood against the evening express dropped, and it showed upon the bridge like some huge glowworm, slackening speed as it came; for the station lay not two hundred yards from where the bridge ended in a semi-fortified gateway. So the train slid past below the bastioned wall almost at a foot's pace, and half a dozen or more English lads, part of a fresh draft from England just up from Bombay, thrust their heads out of the window curious to see what this strange place, what this strange race with which they were to have so much to do, were like. 'Well! I am blowed if they aren't flyin' kites like Christians,' said one in a hushed voice, an' I thought they was all 'eathen, I did----' CHAPTER IV AN UNFORGOTTEN PAST 'Mr. Raymond!' Lady Arbuthnot's voice was insistent, yet soft. She wanted to rouse the sleeper without attracting attention, and now that the waning of daylight had ended out-door amusements, people had begun to drift into the club. The library tables were being rifled of the new picture papers, the smoking bar was fast filling with men, and sounds of women's laughter came from the quaint vaulted rooms where Badminton was being continued by electric light.