III. SHE KNEW HER DUTY
The Palace of Debipur was now filled with anxiety and sorrow. Hemlata scarcely attended to her household duties any longer, and even her mother was drawn away from her life of religious seclusion. Nobo Kumar was lying on a bed of illness, and was scarcely expected to live.
Long years of hardship and struggle had told on his iron constitution, and when at last he was restored to Debipur the reaction came. But he was little inclined to give himself that repose which Nature demanded. Proud of his success and exulting over his return to fortune and fame, he gave himself up to excesses which in his time of life was fatal. Unused to rest, impatient of ease, divorced from the calm enjoyment of a peaceful domestic life, he thirsted for distractions, for celebrations, for pleasures. Nemesis came soon. Within a few years he broke down hopelessly and was confined to his bed. And old physicians of the family shook their heads as they saw the bloodless face and the sunken eyes of the Zemindar who a few years ago seemed to be in the very prime of his life.
Then came and watched by his bedside, by night and by day, the much-suffering woman who had been so long separated from him, dressed in her religious garment which bore on it the names of the gods she worshipped. Hemlata's mother watched with tearful, anxious eyes the husband of her youth, the companion of her life. Nature had endowed them both
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