“I came away with the two servants and an old man. I remembered Shirani, and I found a little hut in the hills where I live. These hills are to me heaven, as the plains were hell. Think--no, do _not_ think--of the stifling life in a tiny courtyard in the densest city quarter, the putrid water, the flies, the atmosphere. I _ought_ to have died long ago, but it is those who are good and beloved who die. Even death scorned me! I have a considerable income, and once a year I am obliged to appear, and draw it in person. I am returning from a short journey now, and this is the first time I have ever met a soul. This lonely little bungalow is generally quite empty.” “Where do you live?” asked Honor, eagerly. “In these hills, miles away, I have my books, flowers, poultry, and the poor. I work among the lepers.” “Alone?” “Yes, for ever alone; and my story is for _your_ ears alone.” “And your own people?” “Believe me dead; and so I am. Did I not die thirty-four years ago? Is there not a very handsome window to my memory in the church where we were first attacked? I saw a description of it in the paper--‘the beloved wife of So-and-so, aged twenty years.’ My husband is married.” “Married!” repeated the girl in a startled voice. “Why not? His family is growing up--he has a son in the service; his eldest girl is twenty. She is called after his first wife. His first wife--poor young thing!--was killed in the Mutiny, massacred on the Bhogulpore road. Was it not sad?” she added, in a hard, emotionless voice. “Very, very sad!” said Honor, in a totally different tone. “I have no name, no people, no friend.” “You will let me be your friend?”--pressing her hand sympathetically. “What is your name, my child?” “Honor Gordon.” “Honor--a fine name! _You_ would have laid down your life--I saw it in your eyes. Alas, I never was brave, I never could bear pain. Life was sweet--any life, not death; anything but a sharp, horrible, violent death! Oh, if death was but a painless sleeping out of life, how many of us would leave it!” “And what is your name?” inquired the girl in her turn. “Nussiband.” “But your _real_ name? Will you not tell me?” “I have forgotten it--almost. It shall never be known now--not even when I am dead. People know me as the Persian woman, who lives near Hawal Ghât.” “Let me do something for you. Oh, you will--you must!” “What could you do, my dear?” she asked in a hopeless tone. “You will allow me to write to you. Let me go too and see you. Permit me to brighten your life in some way.” “Impossible. It has done me good to have seen you. I have poured my story, once before I die, into the ear of a fellow-countrywoman. May you be ever happy and blessed. Give me some little token, not to remember you by, but to keep because it was yours.” “What can I give you?”--thinking with regret of her few trinkets that were elsewhere. “A little cornelian ring, I noticed on your finger.”