exception. A Bengali Brahmin by birth, the son of a minor official in the
service of a petty rajah of Eastern Bengal, he had chosen engineering
instead of medicine or law, the two professions that appeal most to his
compatriots. A certain amount of native money was invested in the company
that owned the Malpura garden; and the directors apparently thought it good
policy to employ an Indian on it.

Like many other young Hindus who have studied in England, Chunerbutty
professed to be completely Anglicised. In the presence of Europeans he
sneered at the customs, beliefs, and religions of his fellow-countrymen and
posed as an agnostic. It galled him that Englishmen in India thought none
the more of him for foreswearing his native land, and he contrasted
bitterly their manner to him with the reception that he had met with in the
circles in which he moved in England. He had been regarded as a hero in
London boarding-houses. His well-cut features and dark complexion had
played havoc with the affections of shop-girls of a certain class and that
debased type of young Englishwoman whose perverted and unnatural taste
leads her to admire coloured men.

In one of these boarding-houses he had met Daleham, when the latter was a
clerk in the city. It was at Chunerbutty's suggestion and with an
introduction from him that Fred had sought for and obtained employment in
the tea company, and as a result the young Englishman had ever since felt
in the Bengali's debt. He inspired his sister with the same belief, and in
consequence Noreen always endeavoured to show her gratitude to Chunerbutty
by frank friendliness. They had all three sailed to India in the same ship,
and on the voyage she had resented what seemed to her the illiberal
prejudice of other English ladies on board to the Hindu. And all the more
since she had an uncomfortable suspicion that deep down in her heart she
shared their feeling. So she tried to seem the friendlier to Chunerbutty.