would have heard from my servants that I saw no one unless by appointment."
"I must beg your pardon for the intrusion. But allow me to tell you that my business with you is of such importance that it would have been hard to put me off with an answer like that. And now I am here I am not going to leave the house until I have let you know what my business is, and have got an answer from you."
"I think I don't want to know; but if you be very brief, as brief as you can, I may allow you to mention your business."
"My business may be mentioned in two words," said Nishakar.
"Well? said Gobindalal, wondering what it could possibly be.
At this time Danesh Khan—for that was the name of the music-master—was giving the bow a rub on a piece of resinous gum preparatory to playing a fresh tune on the violin.
"Your wife, Bhramar Dasi, wishes to lease her property, and—"
He had just begun when the music-master interrupted him as he said, addressing himself to Gobindalal, "This is word number one, let him remember, sir, for he said he would mention his business in two words."
"—And I am the party who wishes to be the lease-holder."
"This is number two," again broke in the music-master, putting up the fore and the middle finger of his right hand together. "He ought to stop there."
"I beg your pardon, Khan sahib, are you counting pigs?" said Nishakar, smiling derisively.
He had touched him at the most delicate point. The music-master fired up at once. "Sir," said he, "please send away this illbred fellow who dares offer this insult to a Musulman."
Gobindalal made no answer, for it seemed his thoughts were elsewhere at the time.
"I had been to Haridragram," said Nishakar, taking up the subject again. "Your wife wishes to lease the property. She let me know that if I could find out your whereabouts I should tell you that she wished to have your consent in the matter. The object of my visit is to communicate to you your wife's desire to grant me the lease, which, she says, cannot be done without your sanction."
Gobindalal was silent still. He looked rather sad and abstracted. Once more Nishakar put the matter clearly before him, and concluded by saying that his wife wanted from him a written permission without which she could not grant him the lease. Gobindalal easily swallowed what Nishakar told him, though the reader knows that his words had no foundation in truth. So after a while he very gently said, "The property is my wife's, not mine. It was given her by will by my uncle, and she might dispose of it as she likes. A written permission from me is of no significance, for I have nothing to do with it. That's the whole thing in a nutshell. Now you know what the fact is, I hope you will allow me to say goodbye."
Nishakar said no more. He thanked him and rose and came downstairs.
Gobindalal felt very low in spirits, and bade Danesh Khan give him a sprightly song. The man chose one he thought would be liked, but Gobindalal could find little or no pleasure in it. He next thought he would fiddle a little. He tried a certain melodious air, the one he had been practising lately, but this evening he played very clumsily though it might be said that he already had a passable hand on the violin. He said to Danesh Khan that he did not feel very well, and told him to go home. He afterwards took up again the novel he had been reading, but he could not give attention to it. So he threw aside the book and called Sona. "I want to sleep a while," he said to him. "Don't wake me before I awake."
The sun was about to go down, and he went and shut himself up in his room.
Gobindalal went not to sleep. He sat on the bed and wept silently. What made him weep we do not know, but probably it was the thought of his wife whom he had left for nearly two years and to whom he had been very cruel. Probably it was the reflection of his past and present sinful life, which made him feel very miserable.
CHAPTER VII.
When Nishakar came and sat in the big room where the music was going on, Rohini withdrew to the one next. Drawing the screen over the doorway which separated the rooms, she stood behind to listen to the conversation that followed.
Standing aside, and lifting one side of the screen very slightly so that she could
