But the tragedy of her face remained in his memory as he drove over the creaking, groaning bridge to Eshwara. The bazaar was full as ever with drifting humanity, busy in the details of every-day life. There was no hint anywhere of the past storm; not even in the palace. It lay, as ever, silent; its blank walls seeming to hold the sunlight back from some secret within,--from some veiled, hidden beauty. The door was closed, but old Akbar Khân came capering at his call, his back roached, in bowing, like a caterpillar's. "The tomb is finished, _Ge-reeb-pun-wâz_," he mumbled, in blubbering importance. "_Ala!_ the sad day! But this slave, knowing all customary things, hath remained insistent on the workmen; therefore all is befitting the noble people, as the _Huzoor_ will see." So, down the shadowy passage he led the way, crablike, to the chapel; for hither, long years before, Father Ninian had brought the body of Pietro Bonaventura, and here, just in front of the Altar steps, he and Pietro's granddaughter--the last of the old priest's charges,--had been buried the day before. The masons had been busy, building up the vault again; but, as Akbar Khân had said, the work was finished, the chapel restored to its original state, swept, and garnished. Even the candles were lit on the Altar, and four of the tallest tapers had been placed, one at each corner of the stone slab on which two more names would have to be cut; while from these tapers long strings of jasmine flowers, such as native women wear, had been hung in drooping chains to form an enclosure. On the slab itself great bossed yellow marigolds were laid to simulate a cross. Dr. Dillon turned to the cringing figure beside him sharply; but there was something almost pathetic in its simper of conscious merit, its certainty of satisfaction. "Did you do that?" he asked. "_Ge-reeb-pun-wâz!_" There was a world of pride and of servitude in the voice, and in the folded, prayerful hands which shot out under the bowings. "This slave made it! The _Huzoor_ will notice it is, fitting. Even the '_crass_'--" he pointed his prayerful hands to the marigolds--"is not forgotten. Has not this dust-like one spent his life in preparing amusements and spectacles for the noble people? He knows that tombs require flowers, as women do." Through the arches behind the old pantaloon Dr. Dillon could catch a glimpse of the garden, ablaze with colour, could smell the perfume of the now fading orange-blossoms, could see the water-maze, with its marble ledges, among the lotus, just wide enough for the flying feet of a laughing girl. The words, the contrast, held him, as the old man went on with an orthodox whine of petition in his voice:--