He handed her a visiting card on which was engraved--
'Louis Asoph, Rajah of Bisnagar.'
'If my memory does not deceive me as to the history of modern India, the
territory from which you take your title has been absorbed into the
English dominion?' said Lady Maulevrier.
'It was trafficked away forty-three years ago, stolen, filched from my
father! but so long as I have power to think and to act I will maintain
my claim to that land; yes, if only by the empty mockery of a name on a
visiting card. It is a duty I owe to myself as a man, which I owe still
more to my murdered father.'
'Have you come all the way from London, and in such weather, only to
tell me this story?'
She had twisted his card between her fingers as she listened to him, and
now, with an action at once careless and contemptuous, she flung it upon
the burning logs. Slight as the action was it was eloquent of scorn for
the man.
'No, Lady Maulevrier, my mention of this story, with which you are no
doubt perfectly familiar, is only a preliminary. I have come to claim my
own, and to appeal to you as a woman of honour to do me justice.
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