ladies in the fort had her choice of the new stuffs from England and was cordially hated in consequence. Tilly Kettle painted her picture a little before she died, and the hot-blooded young writers did duel with small swords in the fort ditch for the honor of piloting her through a minuet at the Calcutta theatre or the Punch House. But Warren Hastings danced with her instead, and the writers were confounded--every man of them. She was a toast far up the river. And she walked in the evening on the bastions of Fort-William, and said: “La! I protest!” It was there that she exchanged congratulations with all her friends on the 20th of October, when those who were alive gathered together to felicitate themselves on having come through another hot season; and the men--even the sober factor saw no wrong here--got most royally and Britishly drunk on Madeira that had twice rounded the Cape. But Lucia fell sick, and the doctor--he who went home after seven years with five lakhs and a half, and a corner of this vast graveyard to his account--said that it was a pukka or putrid fever, and the system required strengthening. So they fed Lucia on hot curries, and mulled wine worked up with spirits and fortified with spices, for nearly a week; at the end of which time she closed her eyes on the weary, weary river and the fort forever, and a gallant, with a turn for _belles lettres_, wept openly as men did then and had no shame of it, and composed the verses above set, and thought himself a neat hand at the pen--stap his vitals! But the factor was so grieved that he could write nothing at all--could only spend his money--and he counted his wealth by lakhs--on a sumptuous grave. A little later on he took comfort, and when the next batch came out---- But this has nothing whatever to do with the story of Lucia, the virtuous maid, the faithful wife. Her ghost went to Mrs. Westland’s powder ball, and looked very beautiful. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The City of Dreadful Night, by Rudyard, Kipling