of his hands, but it wasn't. A sort of departmental formula running;
"Commissioner So-and-So has the matter in hand--refer to him." And so,
when a new danger appeared on the distressed horizon, Amir Khan and a
hundred thousand massed horsemen, Captain Barlow was sent to consult
with the Resident. That was the way; a secretive, trusty, brave man,
for in India the written page is never inviolate.

Captain Barlow was sent--ostensibly as an assistant to the Resident, in
reality to acquire full knowledge of the situation, and then go to the
camp of Amir Khan with the delicate mission of persuading him not to
join his riding spear-men to the Mahratta force, but to form an
alliance with the British.

The Resident had asked for Barlow. He had explained that any show of
interest, two men, or five, or twenty, an envoy, even men of pronounced
position, would defeat their object; in fact, believing Nana Sahib to
be what he was, he conceived the very simple idea of playing the
Oriental's Orientalism against him.

Barlow would be the last man in India to whom one as suspicious as the
Peshwa's son would attribute a subtlety deep enough for a serious
mission. He was a great handsome boy; in his physical excellence he
was beautiful; courage was manifest in the strong content of his deep
brown eyes. Incidentally that was one of the reasons the Resident had
asked for him, though he would have denied it, even to his daughter,
Elizabeth, though it was for her sake--that part of it.

The affair with Elizabeth had been going on for two or three years;
never quite settled--always hovering.