Mrs. Church had returned to the writing-table, and had again taken up her pen. She leaned back in her chair and lifted her delicate chin with a smile that had custom and patience in it.“Very pleased indeed,” she said; and he went away. The intelligent observer, again, would have wondered how he refrained from going back and kissing her. Perhaps the custom and the patience in her smile would have lent themselves to the explanation. At all events, he went away.

He was forty-two, exactly double her age, when he married Judith Strange, eight years before, in Stoneborough, a small manufacturing town in the north of England, where her father was a Nonconformist minister. He was her opportunity, and she had taken him, with private congratulation that she could respect him and private qualms as to whether her respect was her crucial test of him—considered in the light of an opportunity. Not in any sordid sense; she would be more inclined perhaps to apologise for herself than I am to apologise for her. But with an inordinately hungry capacity for life she had the narrowest conditions to live in. She knew by intuition that the world was full of colour and passion, and when one is tormented with this sort of knowledge it becomes more than ever grievous to inhabit one of its small, dull, grimy blind alleys, with the single anticipation of enduring to a smoke-blackened old age, like one of Stoneborough’s lesser chimneys. There was nothing ideal about John Church except his honesty,—already he stooped, already he was grey, sallow and serious, with the slenderest interest in questions that could not express their utility in unquestionable facts,—but when he asked her to marry him, the wall at the end of the alley fell down, and a breeze stole in from the far East, with a vision of palms and pomegranates. She accepted him for the sake of her imagination, wishing profoundly that he was not so much like her father, with what her mother thought almost improper promptitude; and for a long time, although he still stood outside it, her imagination loyally rewarded her.

She felt the East to her fingertips, and her mere physical life there became a thing of vivid experience, to be valued for itself. If her husband confounded this joy in her expansion with the orthodox happiness of a devoted wife, it cannot be said that he was particularly to blame for his mistake, for numbers of other people made it also. And when, after eight years of his companionship, and that of the sunburned policeman, the anæmic magistrate, the agreeable doctor, their wives, the odd colonel, and the stray subalterns that constituted society in the stations they lived in, she began to show a little lassitude of spirit, he put it down not unnaturally to the climate, and wished he could conscientiously take a few months’ leave, since nothing would induce her to go to England without him. By this time India had become a resource, India that lay all about her, glowing, profuse, mysterious, fascinating, a place in which she felt that she had no part, could never have any part, but that of a spectator. The gesture of a fakir, the red masses of the gold-mohur trees against the blue intensity of the sky, the heavy sweetness of the evening wind, the soft colour and curves of the homeward driven cattle, the little naked babies with their jingling anklets in the bazar—she had begun to turn to these things seeking their gift of pleasure jealously, consciously thankful that, in spite of the Amusement Club, she could never be altogether bored.

The story begins in Hassimabad, a red and dusty station where the "business of the Queen-Empress" is carried out amidst the glare of whitewashed stucco pillars and the heart-shaped leaves of pipal trees. The atmosphere is defined by a "boundless stillness" intensified by a "prodigal sun," where the local populace—including chuprassies [office peons] like Bundal Singh in red coats and badge of office, and "writing baboos" [clerks] like Ram Prasannad—closely observe the movements of their British superiors. It is here that John Church receives notice of his appointment as the officiating Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, a role that elevates him to the status of "Acting King" in the eyes of his ambitious wife, Judith.

I must apologise for my boots,” he said, looking down: “I walked over. I am very dusty.”

“What does it matter? You are King of Bengal!”

“Acting King.”

“It is the same thing—or it will be. Sir Griffiths retires altogether in two years—Lord Scansleigh evidently intends you to succeed him.” The lady spoke with obvious repression, but her gray eyes and the warm whiteness of her oval face seemed to have caught into themselves all the light and shadow of the room.

“Perhaps—perhaps. You always invest in the future at a premium, Judith. I don’t intend to think about that.”Such an anticipation, based on his own worth, seemed to him unwarrantable, almost indecent.

“I do,” she said, wilfully ignoring the clouding of his face. “There is so much to think about. First the pay—almost ten thousand rupees a month—and we are poor. It may be a material consideration, but I don’t mind confessing that the prospect of never having to cut the khansamah appeals to me. We shall have a palace and a park to live in, with a guard at the gates, and two outriders with swords to follow our carriage. We shall live in Calcutta, where there are trams and theatres and shops and people. The place carries knighthood if you are confirmed in it, and you will be Sir John Church—that gratifies the snob that is latent in me because I am a woman, John.” (She paused and glanced at his face, which had grown almost morose.) “Best of all,” she added lightly, “as Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal you will be practically sole ruler of eighty millions of people. You will be free to carry out your own theories, and to undertake reforms—any number of reforms! Mr. Ancram says,” she went on, after a moment’s hesitation, “that the man and the opportunity have come together.”

The setting soon shifts to Calcutta, the "City of Palaces," characterized by its trams, theaters, and the great green Maidan.

The carriage drew up on one side of the stately width of Chowringhee. That is putting it foolishly; for Chowringhee has only one side to draw up at—the other is a footpath bordering the great green Maidan, which stretches on across to the river’s edge, and is fringed with masts from Portsmouth and Halifax and Ispahan. When the sun goes down behind them——But the sun had not gone down when Mrs. Church got out of her carriage and went up the steps of the School of Art: it was still burnishing the red bricks of that somewhat insignificant building, and lying in yellow sheets over the vast stucco bulk of the Indian Museum on one side, and playing among the tree-tops in the garden of the Commissioner of Police on the other. Anglo-Indian aspirations, in their wholly subordinate, artistic form, were gathered together in an exhibition here, and here John Church, who was inspecting a gaol at the other end of Calcutta, had promised to meet his wife at five o’clock.The Lieutenant-Governor had been looking forward to this: it was so seldom, he said, that he found an opportunity of combining a duty and a pleasure. Judith Church remembered other Art Exhibitions she had seen in India, and thought that one category was enough.

At the farther end of the room a native gentleman stood transfixed with admiration before a portrait of himself by his own son. Two or three ladies with catalogues darted hurriedly, like humming-birds, from water-colour to water-colour. A cadaverous planter from the Terai, who turned out sixty thousand pounds of good tea and six yards of bad pictures annually, talked with conviction to an assenting broker with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, about the points of his “Sunset View of Kinchinjunga,” that hung among the oils on the other wall. There was no one else in the room but Mr. Lewis Ancram, who wore a straw hat and an air of non-expectancy, and looked a sophisticated twenty-five.

The Maidan serves as the city's lungs, a vast park fringed with masts from global ports, where the "white-faced aliens" walk for exercise amidst the fragrance of sissoo and tamarind trees. Social life centers on Belvedere, the official residence of the Lieutenant-Governor, where elite "walk-round" receptions and balls are held under the watchful presence of turbaned Sikhs. The colonial social structure is rigid, with the Viceroy at the pinnacle, followed by a hierarchy of Members of Council, Departmental Heads, and subalterns.

Duncan emphasizes the vivid and mysterious nature of Indian culture as perceived by Judith Church. She finds solace in the "gesture of a fakir," the "red masses of the gold-mohur trees against the blue intensity of the sky," and the "little naked babies with their jingling anklets in the bazar". The bazar itself is a sensory feast, a place of "naked coolies," "sleek baboos" in European shirts, and the "eternal dominant note" of paisa and rupia. Indigenous religious practices are woven into the landscape, such as the pouring of Hughli water over sacred stones under pipal trees or the presence of grottoes dedicated to Hanuman, the "monkey face" divinity.

The central political conflict involves the College Grants Notification, a policy proposed by John Church to withdraw state aid from "higher culture" (university education) to fund technical schools for the ryot (peasant cultivator).

“He doesn’t intend to withdraw State aid from education. He means to spend the money on technical schools.”

“A benevolent intention. But it won’t make the case any better with the Secretary of State. He will say that it ought to be done without damaging the sacred cause of higher culture.”

“Damn the sacred cause of higher culture!” replied Ancram, with an unruffled countenance. “What has it done out here? Filled every sweeper’s son of them with an ambition to sit on an office stool and be a gentleman!—created by thousands a starveling class that find nothing to do but swell mass-meetings on the Maidan and talk sedition that gets telegraphed from Peshawur to Cape Comorin. I advertised for a baboo the other day, and had four hundred applications—fifteen rupees a month, poor devils! But the Dayes were a fortnight in getting a decent cook on twenty.”

Church argues that it is a "beastly shame" to sweat money in "annas and pice" from impoverished villagers—who "live and breed and rot in pest-stricken holes"—to provide a cheap European education for the sons of wealthy "bunnias". This policy sparks a "tornado" of protest in the Indian press.

“I tell you,” said he, “you might as well petition Sri Krishna as the Viceroy,” when Mohendra Lal Chuckerbutty reverted to this method of obtaining redress. Mohendra, who was a Hindoo of orthodoxy, may well have found this flippant, but he only smiled, and assented, and went away and signed the petition. He yielded to the natural necessity of the pathetic temperament of his countrymen—even when they were university graduates and political agitators—to implore before they did anything else. An appeal was distilled and forwarded. The Viceroy promptly indicated the nature of his opinions by refusing to receive this document unless it reached him through the proper channel—which was the Bengal Government. The prayer of humility then became a shriek of defiance, a transition accomplished with remarkable rapidity in Bengal. In one night Calcutta flowered mysteriously into coloured cartoons, depicting the Lieutenant-Governor in the prisoner’s dock, charged by the Secretary of State, on the bench, with the theft of bags of gold marked “College Grants”; while the Director of Education, weeping bitterly, gave evidence against him. The Lieutenant-Governor was represented in a green frock-coat and the Secretary of State in a coronet, which made society laugh, and started a wave of interest in the College Grants Notification. John Church saw it in people’s faces at his garden parties, and it added to the discomfort with which he read advertisements of various mass meetings, in protest, to be held throughout the province, and noticed among the speakers invariably the unaccustomed names of the Rev. Professor Porter of the Exeter Hall Institute, the Rev. Dr. MacInnes of the Caledonian Mission, and Father Ambrose, who ruled St. Dominic’s College, and who certainly insisted, as part of his curriculum, upon the lives of the Saints.

The text provides a detailed look into the offices of these journals, such as the Word of Truth, where the editor, Tarachand Mookerjee, works in a dhoty amidst the odor of fresh print and cocoa-nut oil, and Mohendra Lal Chuckerbutty of the Bengal Free Press, who uses his "Macaulay-like" prose to attack the "tyrant of Belvedere".

Lewis Ancram, the brilliant but morally flexible Chief Secretary, secretly undermines Church by providing these editors with information and even drafting hostile editorials himself. Ancram’s character is defined by his "secretary's stoop" and his expertise in the Vedic Books, which he uses as a "stepping-stone" to distinguish himself from "the herd" of officials. His romantic entanglements with Rhoda Daye—a "fin-de-siècle" daughter of a Colonel—and his suppressed passion for Judith Church reflect the emotional complexities of the "sun-filled, wondering life" of the British in India.

The narrative reaches its tragic climax in Bhugsi, a remote and malodorous town in Eastern Bengal. Bhugsi is described as a place "full of men and children and crones and monkeys," centered around an ancient, sacred, and slimy tank.

It was the first time in history that the town of Bhugsi had been visited by a Lieutenant-Governor. Bhugsi was small, but it had a reputation for malodorousness not to be surpassed by any municipality of Eastern Bengal. Though Bhugsi was small it was full—full of men and children and crones and monkeys, and dwarfed, lean-ribbed cattle, and vultures of the vilest appetite. The town squatted round a tank, very old, very slimy, very sacred. Bhugsi bathed in the tank and so secured eternal happiness, drank from the tank and so secured it quickly. All such abominations as are unnameable Bhugsi also preferred to commit in the vicinity of the tank, and it was possibly for this reason that the highest death-rate of the last “year under report” had been humbly submitted by Bhugsi.

Here, John Church demonstrates his tireless devotion to duty, inspecting gaols where police use "needles and finger-nails" to extract confessions, and receiving addresses in embossed silver cylinders. However, the reality of rural India—unsanitary conditions and "the bad sickness" (cholera) thrives. Church succumbs to the disease within five hours, a death that is met with a surreal procession where the local crowd burns his effigy on the very night he receives word of his forced resignation from London.

Following Church's death, the social "aliens" retreat to Darjiling, the Himalayan hill station. Darjiling offers a "blue and sun-filled" eternity where white oaks, tree-ferns, and rhododendrons replace the oppressive heat of the plains. The mountains provide a backdrop for the resolution of the romantic plot, as Philip Doyle, a sincere barrister who "belonged to an older school," successfully woos Rhoda Daye amidst a mountain storm and the "gleaming Snows" of the horizon.

The story concludes back in London, where Judith Church lives in a "south side of Kensington" attic, experiencing the "devices of poverty" after her husband’s death. Ancram, now the Knighted Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, arrives to claim her, believing his succession to Church’s office and wife is a "signal" triumph. However, Judith has received a packet of letters from Philip Doyle containing the Bengal Free Press editorial and Ancram's private correspondence, proving that he was the one who publicly ridiculed her husband as a "fool" with "the invincible courage of short-sightedness".

In a final confrontation amidst a room decorated with pink and white azaleas, Judith rejects Ancram, stating that she loved only her "idea" of him. The novel ends with Ancram successfully governing Bengal but facing a "Nemesis" in the form of "the feminine idea of him". The work thus serves as a poignant critique of the imperial "intelligent managing machine" and the personal costs of political and social ambition in the British Raj.