168 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
began gradually to subside when she found there 
were no available means within her power of abating 
the evil which had overtaken her. The Moham- 
medan was kind, and she had no desire unfulfilled 
but that of liberty. By degrees the edge of her grief 
was blunted by the tenderness of the man who had so 
grievously wronged her. She found that repining 
produced no remission of her unhappiness, neither 
did it improve her beauty ; she therefore gradually 
allowed those budding hopes, which swell in all 
young hearts, to open and put forth their delicate 
blossoms, and in a few weeks she was comparatively 
reconciled to the change of condition which had so 
unexpectedly befallen her. 
The lovely Hindoo daily won upon the affections of 
her new lord, who treated her with so much flatter- 
ing fondness that at length she found his presence no 
longer unwelcome, and eventually looked upon him— 
for he was a handsome lover — with a favourable eye. 
The idea of her husband would occasionally intrude 
into her thoughts and fill her bosom with momentary 
anguish ; but the recollection that he would now 
view her as a polluted thing- — as one with whom he 
could no longer hold communion, whose very breath 
would be supposed to convey contamination — stifled 
the pang, and caused her to reflect upon her present 
allotment with a more complacent spirit. She had 
forfeited the privileges of her caste by an act in 
which she was an unwilling agent ; and the conscious- 
ness that if she was restored to her kindred, she must 
rank with Pariahs, who are the most abandoned of 
outcasts, determined her to relinquish the errors of 
