between them. What she heard gave her a cruel shock of surprise. She then learnt for the first time that her mother whom she believed to be in heaven, was really alive and that the grandmother had accidentally come across her in some place of pilgrimage. She learnt that her mother, whose memory she had been cherishing all her life as a most sacred treasure, was, in the eyes of the world a fallen woman. The agony of mind that Maloti bore in silence that night was indescribable—and this was that mother! The pain and the humiliation of that night now returned to her with redoubled intensity.
The mother was weeping still. After regaining her self-possession to some extent, she said—"Does my son-in-law know?"
"No, he doesn't."
"When did you hear?"
"After marriage."
"Was it from aunt Mokshada?"
"Yes."
"It was from her that I heard of your marriage and that your husband was the Goods Clerk at Dinapur. She also told me that you were to come to Dinapur in the month of Aswin."
Maloti wiped away her tears with a corner of her saree, looked her mother full in the face and said—"Then it was not by chance that you
