Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/332

 any adventure, and upon that his own chances of happiness now depended.

To dream of a snake bite, among any of the people of the Far East, is held to signify that ere long the dreamer will receive lavish favours from some lady of exalted rank or surpassing beauty. The more venomous the snake, the brighter, it is believed, will be the qualities with which the dreamer's future mistress is endowed. Tûan Bângau had probably not failed to note the love glances bestowed upon him by the princess, and these, coupled with his dream, supplied him with a key to the situation.

His position in the matter was rather curious. He did not desire Tŭngku Ûteh for herself; she was his monarch's daughter, and the wife of a royal husband; and his duty and his interest alike forbade him to accept her advances. He knew that if his intrigue were to be discovered, he would be a ruined, if not a dead man; and he was, moreover, at this time very genuinely in love with another girl, whom he had recently married. In spite of all these considerations, however, the princess's overtures were, in his eyes, a challenge to his manhood which his code of honour made it impossible for him to refuse. The extreme danger of the business was, in a fashion, its supreme attraction. To evade it, upon no matter what pretext, was to play the poltroon, and on this point no self-respecting Malay, brought up in the poisonous moral atmosphere of an independent state, could admit of any other opinion.

And in this affair there were intrigues within