blue and pink cushions in the bows, pensively twirling a Japanese
parasol, one arm flung round the shoulders of her companion--a
fellow-student; fair and stolid and good-humoured. Broome summed her up
mentally: "Tactless but trustworthy. Anglo-Saxon to the last button on
her ready-made Shantung coat and the blunted toe of her white suède
shoe."

Arúna--in plain English, Dawn--was quite arrestingly otherwise. Not
beautiful, like Lilámani, nor quite so fair of skin; but what the face
lacked in symmetry was redeemed by lively play of expression, piquante
tilt of nose and chin, large eyes, velvet-dark like brown pansies. The
modelling of the face--its breadth and roundness and upturned
aspect--gave it a pansy-like air. Over her simple summer frock of
carnation pink she wore a paler sari flecked with gold; and two ropes of
coral beads enhanced the deeper coral of her full lower lip. Not yet
eighteen, she was studying "pedagogy" for the benefit of her less
adventurous sisters in Jaipur.

Clearly a factor to be reckoned with, this creature of girlish laughter
and high purpose; a woman to the tips of her polished finger nails. Yet
Broome had by no means decided that it _was_ the girl----

After Desmond--Dyán Singh: each, in his turn and type, own brother to
Roy's complex soul. Broome--in no insular spirit--preferred the earlier
influence. But Desmond had sped like an arrow to the Border, where his
eldest brother commanded their father's old regiment; and Dyán
Singh--handsome and fiery, young India at its best--reigned in his
stead. The two were of the same college. Dyán, twelve months younger,
looked the older by a year or more. Face and form bore the Rajput stamp
of virility, of a racial pride, verging on arrogance; and the Rajput