In the house there was no mistress, and without a mistress paradise itself would be a ruin.
As in an untended garden overgrown with grass a single rose or lily will bloom, so in this house Kunda Nandini lived alone. Wherever a few joined in a meal Kunda partook of it. If any one addressed her as house-mistress, Kunda thought, "They are mocking me." If the Dewan sent to ask her about anything her heart beat with fear. There was a reason for this. As Nagendra did not write to Kunda, she had been accustomed to send to the Dewan for the letters received by him. She did not return the letters, and she lived in fear that the Dewan would claim them; and in fact the man no longer sent them to her, but only suffered her to read them as he held them in his hand.
The suffering felt by Surja Mukhi was endured in equal measure by Kunda Nandini. Surja Mukhi loved her husband; did not Kunda love him? In that little heart there was inexhaustible love, and because it could find no expression, like obstructed breathing it wounded her heart. From childhood, before her first marriage, Kunda had loved Na-
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