The call at breakfast-time is one of the pleasantest informalities of life
in India. It might even be the commissioner. Tess ran to make one
of those swift changes of costume with which some women have the
gift of gracing every opportunity. Chamu waddled down the steps to
await with due formality, the individual, in no way resembling a British
commissioner, who was leisurely dismounting at the wide gate fifty yards
to the southward of that little one the beggars used.

He was a Rajput of Rajputs, thin-wristed, thin-ankled, lean, astonishingly
handsome in a high-bred Northern way, and possessed of that air of
utter self-assuredness devoid of arrogance which people seem able
to learn only by being born to it. His fine features were set off by a turban
of rose-pink silk, and the only fault discoverable as he strode up the
path between the shrubs was that his riding-boots seemed too tight
across the instep. There was not a vestige of hair on his face. He was
certainly less than twenty, perhaps seventeen years old, or even younger.
Ages are hard to guess in that land.

Tess was back on the veranda in time to receive him, with different
shoes and stockings, and another ribbon in her hair; few men would
have noticed the change at all, although agreeably conscious of the
daintiness. The Rajput seemed unable to look away from her but
ignoring Chamu, as he came up the steps, appraised her inch by inch
from the white shoes upward until as he reached the top their eyes met.
Chamu followed him fussily.

Tess could not remember ever having seen such eyes. They were
baffling by their quality of brilliance, unlike the usual slumbrous Eastern
orbs that puzzle chiefly by refusal to express emotion. The Rajput bowed