The place wore a most melancholy aspect when Flora arrived. The indispensable cocoa-nut lamp gave forth a faint glimmer that enabled a person, when the eyes became accustomed to it, to distinguish the squalor and filth; for the native dwellings, as a rule, were but one remove from pig-sties. In this room were ranged wooden benches, and on the benches were stretched the forms of several Hindoo women. The air was fœtid with the smell of chunam and the opium and common tobacco smoked by the natives of both sexes, in the hubble-bubble, or hookah, of the country. Flora experienced an indescribable feeling of alarm, while despair seized her again. In the Palace she certainly had comfort. There was none here. Moreover, she saw that she was thoroughly in Singh’s power. In her anxiety to escape she had not thought of that; but now that the danger stared her in the face, she shrank with horror. She yearned for Zeemit. Where was she now? If she failed, everything was lost. Not that Flora doubted her. The old woman had proved her devotion in a hundred ways. But then the difficulties and dangers were so numerous. Besides, many days had elapsed since Zeemit had parted from her in the Palace garden, and during that time she might have thought that the scheme had failed, and had given up watching at the bungalow. As Moghul Singh handed his captive down from the buggy, she cast anxious glances about. But there were only darkness and silence around; nothing could be heard, nothing seen, only the dark mass of building, and the melancholy light of the lamp. As she mounted the two or three steps that led to the verandah, and stood upon the threshold of the doorway, she tottered with the sense of horror with which she contemplated the consequences of remaining. She felt that she dare not enter, that she would sooner rush to certain death in the open city, than pass one hour beneath the roof of that tomb-like place. “What is the matter?” the man asked sharply as he saw that she faltered. “I am faint,” she answered. “The heat has overcome me.” “Oh, nonsense,” was his surly reply. “Come, follow me.” He tried to take her hand, but she held it back. She felt such an unutterable loathing for the villain that it was almost impossible to avoid showing it. The cold-blooded deed that he had been guilty of in decapitating the boy made her shudder.