CHAPTER V.
On the door-step.
When towards evening, Kapalkundala was engaged in doing her round of house-hold duties, the letter, loosening from its hold in the braided hair, fell on to the ground. Anyhow she was unaware of the incident. But Nabokumar saw the letter slipping down to the floor from her hair which set him wondering. When Kapalkundala was called away by some other work, he picked up the missive and read over it. The reading suggested the same conclusion "You will hear of things you, yesterday, wanted to." What is it? Is it a love affair? Is the Brahmin-looking person, the secret lover, of Mrinmoyee? The story pointed to a single moral to the man who never knew overnight's occurrence.
As when a devoted wife in practising the Suttee, or, for some other reasons, mounts her funeral pyre and sets fire to it with her own hands, then, first, the rolling volume of smoke makes a curtain all around, puts out the sight and blots out everything. Then, by degrees, the fire-logs begin to burn and crackle, the sharp tongues of flame begin to loll out from underneath and lick the body at places, and, afterwards, when the fire bursts with a terrific roar
