As the father and son sat confronting each other the contrast between them was significant of the old Bengal and the new.  The silly, light-minded girls in England who had found the younger man’s attractions irresistible and raved over his dark skin and the fascinating suggestion of the Orient in him, should have seen the pair now.  The son, ultra-English in his costume, from his sun-hat to his riding-breeches and gaiters, and the old Bengali, ridiculously like him in features, despite his shaven crown with one oiled scalp-lock, his bulbous nose and flabby cheeks, and teeth stained red by betel-chewing.  On his forehead were painted three white horizontal strokes, the mark of the worshippers of Siva the Destroyer.  His only garment was a dirty old dhoti tied round his fat, naked paunch.

He grinned at his son’s ill-temper and replied briefly: 

“The Rajah wishes to see thee, son.”

“Why?  Is there anything new?”

“I do not know.  Thou art angry at being torn from the side of the English girl.  Art thou to marry her?  Why not be satisfied to wed one of thine own countrywomen?”

The younger man spat contemptuously.

“I would not be content with a fat Hindu cow after having known English girls.  Thou shouldest see those of London, old man.  How they love us of dark skin and believe our tales that we are Indian princes!”

The father leered unpleasantly.

“Thou hast often told me that these white women are shameless.  Is it needful to pay the price of marriage to possess this one?”

“I want her, if only to anger the white men among whom I live,” replied his son sullenly.  “Like all the English out here they hate to see their women marry us black men.”

“There is a white man in the Palace who is not like that.”

“A white man in the Palace?” echoed his son.  “Who is he?  What does he here?”

“A Parliamentary-wallah, who is visiting India and will go back to tell the English monkeys in his country what we are not.  He comes here with letters from the Lat Sahib.”

“From the Viceroy?”

“Yes; thou knowest that any fool from their Parliament holds a whip over the back of the Lat Sahib and all the white men in this land.  This one hath no love for his own country.”

“How knowest thou that?”

“Because the Dewan Sahib loves him.  Any foe of England is as welcome to the Dewan as the monsoon rain to the ryot whose crops are dying of drought.  Thou wilt see this one, for he is ever with the Dewan, who has ordered that thou goest to him before seeing the Rajah.

“Ordered?  I am sick of his orders,” replied the son, petulantly.  “Am I his dog that he should order me?  I am not a Lalpuri now.  I am a British subject.”

“Thy father eats the Rajah’s salt.  Thou forgettest that the Dewan found the money to send thee across the Black Water to learn thy trade.”