CHAPTER VII.
On the outskirt of the city.
Luthfunnisha entered another chamber and closed the door. For full two days she cloistered herself inside the room. In these two days she determined the course she would follow. She arrived at a conclusion and set her mind upon it. The sun went low. Luthfunnisha began preparing her toilet with Peshman's help. It was a strange toilet as it had no evidence of a female make-up. She looked up the dress in the mirror and asked "How now, Peshman? Do you recognise me?"
"Impossible."
"Let me start then. See neither man nor maid follows me."
Peshman timorously added "If you pardon your slave, then she may ask one thing."
"What?"
"What is your object?"
"Final separation between Kapalkundala and her husband for the present. He shall be made mine afterwards."
"Would your ladyship just think over the project in its every possible light?—the dense jungle—the approaching night—and your lonely position?
But, without a word whatsoever, Luthfunnisha tripped forth silently. She directed her steps towards the lonely wooded outskirt of Saptagram wherein Nabokumar lived. Night had come ere she reached the place. The reader may have some recollection of the thicket which lay at a short distance from Nabokumar's dwelling place. When she gained the skirt of the forest-belt, she sat herself down beneath a tree. She sat on there for a considerable length of time, meditating the adventure She was embarking upon. Chance, however, brought her some fortuitious help.
Luthfunnisha could hear from her seat under the tree a dull continuous murmur that was maintained in its uniform key and seemed to issue from human throat. She started to her feet, looked about and saw shafts of light that cut the darkness of the wood. Luthfunnisha could outmatch a man in boldness so she guided her legs towards the place where the light burnt. First she reconnoitered the ground from behind the tree and observed that the light that shone was but the flame of the sacrificial fire and the voice she heard was the sound of incantation. She distinguished a sound in the midst of chants which she deciphered to be a name. At the mention of the name Luthfunnisha approached the man who was feeding the sacrificial fire and seated herself in proximity to him.
Let her be seated there for the present. But as the reader has not heard of Kapalkundala, for a long time, we must needs enquire her "goings on."