The Ranee gnashed her teeth. Had Jhansi been strong and rich she would have flung the Governor-General's pension in his face, and dared him to do his worst. As it was she bided her time. Yearning for vengeance with the fierce, concentrated passion of the strong in mind and helpless in body, she sat at home, brooding over her wrongs, but doing nothing. Her guaranteed income, so petty to her magnificence, was, in the course of time, reduced. The late rajah had left debts. The present governor refused to settle them. The Ranee stated, mildly enough, her inability to pay, and the governor of the province decreed that her pension should be mulcted of a certain yearly sum until the amount due from the late rajah's estate had been paid. And still the Ranee said nothing. Being too weak to rebel, she was too proud to murmur. But the sore in her spirit grew. Sitting with bowed head in the retirement of her palace, she heard of the worship in Hindoo temples being stopped for lack of funds, of priests and Brahmins wandering homeless through the land, and of kine being slaughtered in the very heart of the stainless city; but still she made no sign. Then, at last, the year of prophecy, with its strange portents, dawned. Flat cakes, the sacrament of union in life and in death, were carried from village to village. From one to another, through the crowded bazaars and markets, and into the temples defrauded of their gains, there flew a mysterious whisper of impending change. It penetrated to the palace where the Ranee sat, nursing her vengeance, and with a rapture, such as she had never hoped to know, her darkened spirit leapt to meet it. Destruction--death--torrents of blood--a great dominion established on strength and cemented by terror, passing away for ever. What could it mean but that the hour for which she had so long and so hopelessly craved had come? And now the Ranee put on a smiling face. She welcomed the English to her palace, and entertained them royally. 'We must bow to the will of the Supreme,' she said, when one and another expressed surprise at her changed attitude. She would even confer gravely with the English authorities on the emergencies of the time, and recommend measures for their security. But all the time she was adding to her bodyguard, and secretly drawing the discontented about her, and exercising her magnetic power of fascination on the troops. Such was the state of Jhansi when the rajah's heir came knocking at the Ranee's door. She had heard of his probable accession, and of his progress through Central India, and she was exceedingly anxious to see him; as soon, therefore, as he gave in his name he was admitted.