already broken and who is weary of India."

Having a very extensive knowledge of dancing girls and their ways,
Gungadhura did not believe much more than two per cent. of Patali's
account of what had taken place, and he was right, except that he grossly
overestimated her truthfulness. And even with his experienced cynicism
it never entered his head to suppose that Patali was the individual who
warned Yasmini in advance of the preparations being made to poison
her by Gungadhura's orders. Yet, as it was Patali's own sister who made
the sweetmeats, and tampered with the charcoal for the filter, and put
the powdered diamonds in the chutney, it was likely enough that Patali
would know the facts; and as for motives, dancing girls don't have them.
They fear, they love, they desire, they seek to please. If Yasmini could
pluck heart-strings more cleverly than Gungadhura could break and bruise
them, so much the worse for Gungadhura's plans, that was all, as far
as Patali was concerned.

For several days after that, as Yasmini more than hinted in her letter to
Tess, repeated efforts were made to administer poison in the careful
undiscoverable ways that India has made her own since time immemorial.
But you can not easily poison any one who does not eat, and who drinks
wine that was bottled in Europe; or at any rate, to do it you must call in
experts who are expensive in the first place as well as adepts at blackmail
in the second. Yasmini enjoyed a charmed life and an increasing appetite,
Gungadhura's guards attending to it however, that she took no more
forbidden walks and rides and swims by moonlight to make the hunger
really unendurable. Supplies were allowed to pass through the palace
gate, after they had been tampered with.

Finally Gungadhura, biting his nails and drinking whisky in the intervals