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Kapalkundala.
67

Nabokumar's house was situated in an out-of-the-way nook on the periphery of Saptagram. The streets in her much ruined state were sequestered and overgrown with shrubs and trailers. In the background of Nabokumar's dwelling place lay a thick forest. A small stream ran across a mile's distance in the fore-ground that meandering its course around a small field entered the wood. The house was brick-built though on an all-round consideration it did not rise much above the common-place. Although double-storied, it was not enormously high and so could not have any pretension to a mansion. Its specimen height can, now-a-days, be seen in the basement in many instances.

Two young women stood on the house-top and were viewing the country round below. The house was framed in a beautiful setting. It was evening and the landscape was really beautiful and fascinating. Close by, lay the dense woodland with the innumerable feathered choristers singing their piping chorus inside with the rivulet flowing at a distance, looking a thin silver ribbon. Yonder across the grounds unrolled the panoroma of landscape and town where gleamed ten thousand edifices of the vast city the windows and casements of which were thronged with citizens eager to have an airing in the soft breeze of the fresh spring. Far away on the otherside, were the shadows of the evening thickening over the broad water of the Bhagirathi crowded with sailing smacks.

Of the young women on the terrace, the complexion