compared with what I now felt, when I knew she was in the arms of another.  In the first transports of my grief and rage, I could have freely put to death the father, daughter, husband, and myself.  I was particularly desirous of seeing Veenah, and venting on her the bitterest reproaches.  Unjust that I was!  Her sufferings were not inferior to mine; but she had not, like me, the privilege of making them known.  I soon found that Hircarrahs, in the pay of Balty Mahu, watched all my motions; and if I had attempted any scheme of vengeance, its execution would have been impracticable.

“After my first transports had subsided into deep and settled grief, my love and tenderness for Veenah returned in full force.  I endeavoured to get a sight of her, and thought I should be comparatively happy if I could converse with her, as formerly, though she was the wife of another.  After a short time, my uncle’s family came to Benares, on a visit to my father and to Shunah Shoo.  By the aid of my indulgent mother, who was seriously alarmed for what she saw I suffered, I was able to see Fatima, and to make her the bearer of a letter to Veenah, complaining of her breach of faith, and soliciting an interview.  She verbally replied to it through Fatima; and stated, in her justification, that she was hurried from Benares to a town on the river, whence she was rapidly transported to the castle of Omrah, who had not long before lost his wife, and who was more than four times her age.  That notwithstanding the notions of filial obedience in which she had been brought up, and the severity with which her father had ever exercised his authority, she had resisted his commands on this occasion, and would have preferred death to marrying the Omrah—­nay, would have inflicted it on herself; but that finding her unyielding after all their exertions, they had effected their purpose by a deception which they had practised on her, wherein it seemed that I had unconsciously concurred; for, by means of an intercepted letter of mine to Fatima, in which, hopeless of learning the place of Veenah’s retreat, I had expressed an intention of visiting England; and, by the farther aid of some dexterous forgeries, calculated to impose on more experienced minds than hers, they succeeded in persuading her that I had actually set out for Europe, with an intention of never returning.  That entertaining no doubt of this intelligence —­hopeless of ever seeing me again, and indifferent to every thing besides, she had been led an unresisting victim to the altar.

“Such was the vindication which she considered it just to make me.  But all the entreaties of Fatima—­all my letters, impassioned as they were, appealing at once to her generosity, humanity, and love,—­could not prevail on her to grant me an interview.

“‘Tell him,’ said she, ’that heaven has forbid it, and to its decrees we are bound to submit.  I am now the wife of another, and it is our duty to forget all that is past.  But if this be possible, my heart tells me it can be only by our never meeting!’