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4 touched his ridiculously small ears, looked like the horns of a combative ram.

And as to his reputation and standing, Sir James Spottiswoode had vouched for it.

There was also Charlie Thorneycroft's drawling, slightly saturnine corroboration.

"Tremendously swanky beggar in his own country," he said to pretty, violet-eyed Victoria de Rensen. "Descendant of the flame on his father's side, and related to the moon on the bally distaff. Cousin to Vishnu, Shiva, Doorgha, and what-not, and college chum to all the assorted and hideous divinities of the Hindu heaven. His principality is small, barren, poor. A mixture of rocks and flies and hairy and murderous natives. But he is the very biggest among the bigwigs of India. To two hundred million benighted Hindus he is the deity—Brahm, what?—all the gods rolled into one and topped by a jolly, crimson caste-mark. He's the gods earthly representative, you know, Vic darling. Not only that. For"—he dropped his voice to a flat whisper—"this is the first time in the history of the world—hang it, before the history of the world—that a Maharaja of Oneypore has left his native soil."