Talbot Mundy

“ I have no human friends; who are not my servants are my enemies.”
She had drifted with her entourage of waiting women from a hatchery of treason on the outer wall of Delhi to her present strange abiding place, and Gopi Lall had sent her soon afterward one love missive–through the window. It was gory, and the blood was barely dried. Its eyes, wide opened, had been forced into a squint when dead, or during death from torture; and the lips had been attended to as only a dacoit’s imagination could direct. It was not easy to recognize the once alluring face of Yasmini’s particular pet handmaiden ”

“ There had been such a city once, close to Rajah-batkhowa, and a hundred thousand men all armed with axes might have cleared it still to shine in the jungle coaxing sun. But only one piece of it stood in the open—carved and painted, cupolaed and domed; a wonder building round a courtyard where fountains used to play in long forgotten ages; and there lived Yasmini. She called the place the Panch Mahal; and that, in a language of the cleaner, braver North, means “the playground of the ladies.”
The North-born troopers under Colonel Stapleton’s command knew well the meaning of the words ”

“ But, through channels undiscoverable, Gopi Lall became aware of all the news and of every move that the police might contemplate against him; and he knew, too, that the soldiers were still doomed to inactivity. And all the clue there was as to who might be in league with him was that certain villagers grew strangely rich—for villagers. ”

“ Art was the essence of her. She was suppleness and subtlety and studied grace in every attitude and word. And she was not married; for marriage, in the East at all events, would have been the sepulcher of artistry like hers. ”