The sight of the weeping child touches a chord in the heart of Gowhar Jan, the famous dancing girl of Lahore.  She takes the orphan home, christens her Imtiazan, and does her best to blunt the evil memories of her desertion.

Gowhar Jan did her duty by the child according to her lights.  She engaged the best “Gawayyas” to teach her music, the best “Kath-thaks” to teach her dancing, the best “Ustads” to teach her elocution and deportment, and the best of Munshis to ground her in Urdu and Persian belles lettres; so that when Imtiazan reached her fifteenth year her accomplishments were noised abroad in the bazaar.  Beautiful too she was, with the fair complexion of the border-races, slightly aquiline nose, large dark eyes and raven hair, the latter unadorned and drawn simply back in accordance with the custom of her mother’s people which forbids the unmarried girl to part her hair or deck it with flowers.  Her Indo-Punjabi dress, the loose many-folded trousers, the white bodice and the silver-bordered scarf of rose pink—­but added to her charm.  Yet was Gowhar Jan troubled at heart, for the girl was in her eyes too modest, too retiring, and cared not at all whether her songs and dances found favour with the rich landholders, Sikh Sardars and the sons of Babu millionaires, who crowded to Gowhar Jan’s house.  “Alas,” sighed Gowhar Jan, “she will never be like Chanda Malika, gay, witty and famous for generations; her education has been wasted, and her name will die!” But Imtiazan only pouted and answered; “I care not to throw good saffron before asses!”

[Illustration:  Imtiazan.]

Then Fate cast the die.  Her Munshi one day brought to the house a Musulman, dressed in the modern attire of young India, who had acquired such skill in playing the “Sitar”, that he was able straightway and without mistake to accompany Imtiazan’s most difficult songs.  Thereafter he came often to the house and gradually played himself into the affection of the young girl, who after some hesitation consented to marry him and elope with him to a distant city.  Thus Imtiazan left the house of her girlhood and fled with her husband to Bombay.  Money they had not, where-fore Imtiazan, not without a pang, sold her necklace of gold beads and bravely started house-keeping in the one small room they chose as their home, while he went forth to seek employment worthy of his degree at the Calcutta University and of his Rohilla ancestry But alas! work came not to his hands:  and as the money slowly dwindled, he grew morose and irritable and often made her weep silently as she sat stitching the embroidery designed to provide the daily meal.  She knew full well that vain pride baulked his employment; and after many a struggle she prevailed upon him to become a letter-writer.  “An undergraduate, who has read Herbert Spencer, Comte and Voltaire,” said he, “cannot demean himself to letter-writing for the public,” to which she justly replied that an education which prevents a man earning his daily bread must be worthless.