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impression that what there was to divulge was less than flattering, so I could not leave it there. I thought of attempting the sort of pout that Emily was so good at when disappointed, but realizing that this would make me plainer than usual, smiled instead.
    ‘May I ask you some questions then?’
    ‘Fire away!’ he replied, confident that I would discover nothing of interest in this fashion.
    ‘You know Mr Erskine only by hearsay?’
    ‘That is correct.’
    ‘Do many people know of him then?’
    ‘In certain circles.’
    ‘He is influential?’
    ‘Again—in certain circles!’
    ‘He cannot be a young man.’
    ‘From where I stand he appears so.’
    ‘And yet he cannot be old, either?’
    ‘From where you stand he would probably appear so!’
    ‘He is rich?’
    ‘Unbelievably!’
    ‘Popular?’
    ‘Hardly!’
    ‘Is he, Mr Roberts … is he a rogue?’
    ‘Now that would depend on your definition of the word.’
    ‘ Touché! ’ I laughed, and gave up.
    We were silent for a while and in the stillness I again became aware of the heat.
    ‘But now, to return to the subject of Lucknow, and to your desire to see the “real” India, I must confess that I wish your visit could have taken place at a happier time.’
    ‘But what is wrong with the present?’
    ‘Nothing. For the moment. It is the immediate future that I fear. I am uneasy at the idea of any party of young and—you must pardon me—ignorant Westerners venturing so far into the hinterland these days.’
    ‘Will you tell me the reason?’
    ‘I don’t believe I have one. Merely an intuition backed by experience.’ He paused, with his hands in the pockets of his white alpaca jacket and his eyes on the dully glistening water. ‘But I think I have lived in this country long enough to have learnt to trust my instincts, and a sort of sixth sense tells me that we can expect trouble of some sort in the near future.’
    ‘But you must have been given some cause to think so?’
    ‘You must not allow me to alarm you, Miss Hewitt. Remember that I am not an Army man, nor yet in the employ of the Company. But for all that I have a very wide experience of the country and a fairly sound appreciation of its people. India has been my home since I was sixteen, and I speak and write more than one of its languages. My work, as you know, requires me to travel much, and over the past two years I have heard many things that caused me uneasiness—not great things, mind you, apparently the official mind finds them entirely too trivial for notice. But I have become aware of a restlessness—almost something of perturbation in the mind of the ordinary man that was not there, and this I swear, five years ago. The atmosphere of the country has changed.’
    His face was serious and his eyes sombre as he spoke.
    ‘I cannot pretend to understand this, but I know it is so, and I fear that in the months I have been away matters may have disimproved—particularly where you are going. The Kingdom of Oudh.’
    ‘Because of the annexation?’
    ‘Precisely.’
    We had heard before leaving home that Lord Dalhousie, the Governor General, after repeated warnings to the Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of Oudh to mend his profligate and extravagant ways or lose his throne, had at length implemented his threats, deposed the Nawab, and annexed the kingdom. ‘A good thing too—and high time!’ I remembered my uncle commenting. ‘Damned feller is demented!’
    But that was all I had heard, and if there had been discussion about the rights and wrongs of this seemingly high-handed action they certainly did not take place in our immediate circle. Mr Roberts himself had enlightened me considerably as to the system of government obtaining in India, both the British territories and the independent native kingdoms, and how it was that the East India Company, ‘a parcel of penny-catching traders’ as he called them, had come to be the effective rulers of the whole vast country. So I knew that the