Martin released his hold and drew back respectfully, for there was something so touchingly sorrowful in her tone, and yet so majestic, that both her listeners were deeply impressed. “Yours is a noble nature,” said Harper. “It is that of a true woman’s, and it is the differences in our nationalities only that cause us to misunderstand each other.” “Why should there be any misunderstanding? A Cashmere woman never forgets a kindness, she never forgives an injury; and there is one wrong, which, when once inflicted upon her, only the death of the wronger can atone for. Were I back amongst my own people, those of them in whose veins runs my family’s blood would band themselves together to avenge me, and they would never rest until they had tracked down and smitten the foul reptile who found me as a lily, fair and bright, who plucked me with a ruthless hand, who befouled me, and robbed me of treasures that have no price, and then flung me away, a broken, friendless woman.” “You can never say with truth,” answered Harper, “that you are friendless while the life-blood warms my veins. By everything that I hold dear, I pledge myself to use every endeavour to protect you, and set you right again.” His words were like magic to her. They touched her and sank to those hidden springs whence flowed gentleness, love, and truth. As she stood there before him, the very embodiment of womanly grace and beauty, it would have been hard indeed for a stranger to have imagined that in her breast rankled one feeling of hatred. How could he stay the invisible electric fire which passed from him to her, and from her to him, and drew both together, even as the needle is drawn to the magnet? Human nature is the same now as it was when time began, as it will be until time ends. Each of these two beings felt the influence of the other. She was taken captive, bound with chains that galled not, and filled with the ineffable sense of adoration for one who had suddenly risen before her as a worldly god, from whom she would draw hope, peace, happiness, and life, and that being so, she was willing to bow down and yield herself as his slave. And he, deeply sensible to her great beauty, and pitying her for her sorrows, felt like a knight of old would have done, whose watchword was “Chivalry,”--that he must champion her for the all-sufficient reason that she was a woman, defenceless and alone. Whatever scruples he might have entertained at first, he felt now that he was justified in using every endeavour to rescue Flora Meredith, and that he would be serving his country loyally in following Moghul Singh with a view of bringing him to justice. “Haidee,” he said, after a pause, “I will go to Cawnpore.” “That is bravely spoken,” she answered, her face beaming with a look of joy; “and you may be able to render good service there by putting your countrymen on their guard? for I know that the Nana Sahib but waits a fitting opportunity to give the signal for a rising.”