United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Women -- Social conditions -- Fiction
Under the burning sun of India, through the tangled jungles of Oude,
she wandered in quest of the young missionary and his mother, now
springing away from the crouching tigers that glared at her as she
passed; now darting into some Himalayan cavern to escape the wild
ferocious eyes of Nana Sahib, who offered her that wonderful lost
ruby that he carried off in his flight, and when she seized it,
hoping its sale would build a church for mission worship, it
dissolved into blood that stained her fingers. With a fiendish laugh
Nana Sahib told her it was a part of the heart of a beautiful woman
butchered in the "House of Massacre" at Cawnpore. On and on she
pressed, footsore and weary but undaunted, through those awful
mountain solitudes, and finally hearing in the distance the bark of
Hero, she followed the sound, reached the banks of Jumna, and there
amid the ripple of fountains, and the sighing of the cypress, in the
cool shadow cast by the marble minarets and domes of Shah Jehan's
Moomtaj mausoleum, Mr. and Mrs. Lindsay joyfully welcomed her; while
upon the fragrant air floated divine melodies that Douglass told her
were chanted by angels in her mother's grave, beneath the clustering
white columns.
When after many hours she awoke, it was night. A faint light trembled
in one of the globes of the gas chandelier, and a blanket had been
laid over her. Starting up she saw a figure sitting at the window,
apparently watching what passed in the street below.
"I hope you feel refreshed. I can testify you have slept as soundly
as the youths whom Decius put to bed some time since near Ephesus."
Olga rose, turned on the gas that flamed up instantly, and showed her
elaborately dressed in evening toilette. Her shoulders and arms,
round and pearly white, were bare save the shining tracery of jewels
in necklace and bracelets; and in the long train of blue silk that
flowed over the carpet, she looked even taller than in the morning
walking suit. Her ruddy hair, heaped nigh on her head, was surmounted
by a jewelled comb, whence fell a cataract of curls of various
lengths and sizes, that touched the filmy lace which bordered her
shoulders like a line of foam where blue silk broke on dimpled flesh.
As Regina gazed admiringly at her, Olga came closer, and stood under
the gas-light.
"A penny for your thoughts! Am I handsome? Somebody says only 'fools
and children tell the truth.' You are not exactly the latter;
certainly not the former; nevertheless, being a rustic, all unversed
in the fashionable accomplishment of 'fibbing,' you may dispense with
the varnish pot and brush. Tell me, Regina, don't you feel inclined
to fall at my feet and worship me?"
"Not in the least. But I do think you very handsome, and your dress
is quite lovely. Are you going to a party or a ball?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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