THE SLAVE GIRL OF AGRA
different design which he would not, or dared not, disclose.
When a woman's suspicions are aroused she seldom fails to worm out the whole truth. She reads signs which are invisible to the duller eyes of man; she hears things which to him are inaudible; she comprehends mysteries which to him are insoluble. Slowly and gradually, partly by inquiries through her women, and partly from confessions extracted from her obdurate and blunt husband, the truth at last revealed itself to her. Her wrath was great, but for a time she nursed it in silence. That her daughter, the heiress of a historic House, should be wedded to a homeless dependant, was inconceivable to her proud mind; that the marriage should be dictated to her and to her husband by the wretched schemer, Gokul Das, made her wild. Yet she knew Gokul Das of old, and she bent all the powers of her resourceful mind to face that formidable schemer who had usurped the administration of the two estates, and who now dared to lay his sacrilegious hands on the domestic affairs of the family.
Nobo Kumar felt the tension unbearable, and tried to approach the subject, but only met with a cold repulse from his silent and dignified wife. And he felt that his secret was no longer a secret from her.
Some domestic scenes followed, and Nobo Kumar came off worst. The humiliation and shame of marrying the beautiful and high-born Hemlata with a man picked up in the streets was pressed on him in cold, cutting words which scarified him to the heart. Proud as he was stubborn, he felt within himself that his wife was perhaps right, and that the low-born
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