ust
that I was! Her sufferings were not inferior to mine; but she had not,
like me, the privilege of making them known. I soon found that
Hircarrahs, in the pay of Balty Mahu, watched all my motions; and if I
had attempted any scheme of vengeance, its execution would have been
impracticable.

"After my first transports had subsided into deep and settled grief, my
love and tenderness for Veenah returned in full force. I endeavoured to
get a sight of her, and thought I should be comparatively happy if I
could converse with her, as formerly, though she was the wife of
another. After a short time, my uncle's family came to Benares, on a
visit to my father and to Shunah Shoo. By the aid of my indulgent
mother, who was seriously alarmed for what she saw I suffered, I was
able to see Fatima, and to make her the bearer of a letter to Veenah,
complaining of her breach of faith, and soliciting an interview. She
verbally replied to it through Fatima; and stated, in her justification,
that she was hurried from Benares to a town on the river, whence she was
rapidly transported to the castle of Omrah, who had not long before lost
his wife, and who was more than four times her age. That notwithstanding
the notions of filial obedience in which she had been brought up, and
the severity with which her father had ever exercised his authority, she
had resisted his commands on this occasion, and would have preferred
death to marrying the Omrah--nay, would have inflicted it on herself;
but that finding her unyielding after all their exertions, they had
effected their purpose by a deception which they had practised on her,
wherein it seemed that I had unconsciously concurred; for, by means of
an intercepted letter of mine to Fatima, in which, hopeless of learning
the place of Veenah's retreat, I had expressed an intention of visiting
England; and, by the farther aid of some dexterous forgeries, calculated
to impose on more experienced minds than hers, they succeeded in
persuading her that I had actually set out for Europe, with an intention
of never returning. That entertaining no doubt of this intelligence
--hopeless of ever seeing me again, and indifferent to every
thing besides, she had been led an unresisting victim to the altar.

"Such was the vindication which she considered it just to make me. But
all the entreaties of Fatima--all my letters, impassioned as they were,
appealing at once to her generosity, humanity, and love,--could not