for two days I never left her. Some of the eunuchs first, and
afterwards some Indian women, came and waited on us, and brought us
all the food we needed--and that was not much for either of us. She
lay still, saying little, and sometimes holding my hand while she
slept, and then waking up to shed tears upon it, and to murmur the
gratitude which I had done so little to deserve. On the second day I
had Rupert brought to her. He was better by this time, though still
very weak, and just able to walk across the room with his arm resting
in mine. I guided him to a seat beside her, and placed their hands in
one another's, and then I came out quickly. I left them together; for
if I had loved Marian, he had loved her too, and if my love for her
had been the stronger, so had been hers for him. And I could not feel
jealousy any longer now that Marian was dying.

For this was the end of it all, the end of my stormy love and rivalry
and my adventures in the Indian realms. Marian, the beautiful Marian,
the woman whose fascination had led me so far, and involved me among
such strange events in such unwonted scenes, was dying. I had come too
late to save her, and all I had done or attempted for her sake had
been in vain. And when I knew this, when I looked back over those
three troubled years and saw the outcome, there came borne in upon my
mind a great resignation; I beheld myself as if I had been another
person, and the folly and wickedness that was in my heart stood
revealed to me as they had never been even in those dreadful hours in
the Calcutta dungeon, when I sank down, as I believed, to die.
Standing beside that bedside of the woman I had loved and sinned for,
watching the grey stain of mortality creep out upon those glorious
features, the world and all its prizes and possessions became to me a
mockery, and all that remained to comfort me was the memory of words I
had read in that old Book at home: there, in that heathen palace,
surrounded by the temples and trophies of false gods, was vouchsafed
to me the light which I had refused to receive when I dwelt among
Christians in a Christian land, and the Divine mercy which had
followed me through so many wanderings overtook me at the last.

On the morning of the third day one of the Indian servants who waited
upon us took me aside and whispered something in my ear--something
which made my heart beat fiercely and sent a tingle through my veins.

I left the summer-house and took m