summer-house at the foot of the garden, and
determined to remain there till the cavalcade had set out. It was some
time before I could fix my attention on what I read; but after a while,
the interest the book had previously excited returned, and I became at
length so engrossed by the incidents of the story, as to forget the
festival, the procession, the tiger, and the elephant, as much as if
they had never before entered my head.

"After some hours passed in this intellectual banquet, I waked from my
day dream, and I thought again of the spectacle with a feeling bordering
on indifference. I walked towards the house, where all appeared to be
still and silent as a desert. I entered it, and of the forty or fifty
menials belonging to it, not one was to be seen. Those who were not in
attendance on the family, had sought some respite from their ordinary
labours. The Zenana then caught my eye, and I felt irresistibly impelled
to enter it. I used great caution, however, looking around me in every
direction as I proceeded there. I found the same silence and desertion
as in the other parts of the mansion. I passed through a sitting-room
into a long gallery, with which the bed-chambers of the ladies
communicated. The doors were all open, and the whole interior of their
apartments exhibited so strange a medley of unseemly objects, and such
utter disorder, as materially to affect my opinion of female delicacy,
and to damp my desire of becoming acquainted with my cousins. I passed
on, with a feeling of disappointment bordering on disgust, when I came
to a room which went far to redeem the character of the sex in my
estimation. Here all was neatness and propriety: every thing was either
in place, or only enough out of it to indicate the recent occupation of
the room, or to show the taste or talent of the occupant; such as a book
left half open at one end of an ottoman, and a piece of embroidery at
the other. The flowers too, which decorated the room, showed by their
freshness that they had not long left their beds. I could not help
stopping to survey a scene which accorded so well with my previous
notions of female refinement. At the end of the gallery was a veranda,
facing the east, and surrounded by lattices. In this were a number of
flower-pots, arranged with the same air of neatness and taste as had
been conspicuous in the chamber. I entered it, for the purpose of
looking into the flower-garden, with which it communicated; and on