three women had been attended to, and if they had left the house. The
crafty butler pretended not to understand the meaning of her words. She
could not speak the language, and her ayah, who had always acted as
interpreter, whenever she wished to issue her commands personally, had
been, owing to her hasty retreat, left behind at the Capital. Boiling
with rage at being, as it were, set at defiance in her own house and by
her own domestics, fatigued with her journey, and alarmed at the
prospect of being in the power of Captain Snaffle, also dreading the
disclosures he might make, it was no wonder that she sought the quiet of
her own chamber much earlier than was her usual custom. For several
hours she turned uneasily on her couch, her mind disturbed by
conflicting doubts and fears, when a strange attendant entered, bearing
a large goblet of sherbet, which had been rendered deliciously cool by
being placed for several hours in a mixture of saltpetre and glauber
salts. This was her favourite evening beverage, which, in her now heated
and excited state was very acceptable. Motioning the woman to place it
on the teapoy, near her pillow, she was about to give her further
instructions, when she noticed that she was a stranger, not from her
features, for they were concealed beneath the folds of her sarree, which
had been thrown completely over her head, revealing only a small portion
of the lower part of her face, but from her general appearance. Finding
that she was not understood, she stretched forth her hand for the goblet
and took a long draught, unconscious of the piercing dark eyes that
gleamed down upon her with jealous hatred and fiendish pleasure from
behind the silken sarree of her new attendant, as she took from her hand
the half-emptied goblet, which, after placing on the teapoy, she
quickly left the room. There was something suspicious about the action
of the woman, but Lady Chutny was too much occupied with her own
thoughts to notice it at the time, and soon after sank into a doze from
which she started in affright, as if from some dreadful dream, only to