“Miserable dotard!” answered Zula scornfully; “if I had but seen you dead at my feet, I could have died happily.” “Take her away, Moghul--instant death!” The unhappy Zula was dragged out of the room, and the King, having glanced at Flora, locked the door, and, putting the key in his girdle, walked away. CHAPTER XXXIII. A TERRIBLE VOW. When Flora found herself alone, she gave way to bitter despair. It seemed as if fate was mocking her. She was hopeless. No sooner had she found a friend in the unhappy Zula, than that friend was snatched away to suffer a cruel death. “Why should she die, and I be spared?” the poor girl moaned, as she rocked herself backwards and forwards under the influence of the mental torture she was enduring. “Oh, that I could lie down here and end my wretched life! Why do I live? Why am I spared? It is not that I fear to meet death. Life has a thousand terrors for me, but death has none. Friends, home, happiness, all gone--all gone, and yet I am preserved, for what end, for what end? It is a mystery that I cannot hope to fathom. I will try to be patient--to have faith in the goodness of Heaven. But I am weak, and in my human blindness Heaven seems unjust, and the burden of my cross is more than I can bear.” She sank down on her knees by the side of the couch, and, burying her face in her hands, wept and prayed. She was suffering the very extreme of mental torture. Not a ray of hope shone out of the gloom into which she was plunged. “Oh, for a friendly hand and a soothing voice!” she murmured; but neither was there. She was alone, and however awful the sorrow might be, she must endure it. There are times when it really seems as if Heaven was unmindful of our sufferings, and with only human hearts and brains to endure, we appear to have more than human sorrow thrust upon us. We cry aloud for help, but it comes not; we pray for death, but it is withheld; we totter beneath our burden, and yet it is not lightened. Flora Meredith experienced something of this--whichever way she turned her eyes she saw no help, only darkness and sorrow, and she almost impiously believed that the Christian’s God had forsaken her. It was scarcely to be wondered at that she should feel like this; for she had been borne like a reed on the current of swift-flowing events, and though she had prayed for help, no help had come. In a little while she rose from her kneeling position at the couch, and made an inspection of the apartment. She scarcely knew why, though perhaps in her breast was some half-formed hope that a way of escape might present itself. At one end of the room was a carved archway, and before this archway hung a massive velvet curtain. She drew this curtain on one side, and there was revealed a small and exquisitely furnished boudoir. A long window, before which was a half-drawn amber silk curtain, stood open, and a verandah was visible.