rance, Indian beauties, whose voluptuous feminine charms were
calculated to make the blood even of the spoilt European run warm.
Dressed in gold-glittering petticoats and jackets, which left a hand's
breadth of light brown skin visible round the waist, with gold coins
upon the blue-black hair, they executed their dances to the monotonous
tone of weird musical instruments upon a carpet spread in the middle of
the tent. The bare arms, the bones and toes of their little feet were
adorned with gold bracelets set with pearls and rings bedizened with
jewels. Though their motions had nothing in common with the bacchanalian
abandon of other national dances, yet the graceful play of their supple,
lithe limbs was seductive enough to enchant the spectators. The Indians
threw silver coins to the dancers, but the Russians, according to their
native custom, clapped applause and never tired of demanding amid shouts
of delight a repetition of the dance.

Amid the general wantonness there was only one who remained morose and
anxious, and this was Heideck, the newly-made captain in the Russian
army.

He knew that it would be easy for Morar Gopal's shrewdness to find him
in case he had something to report. And that the Hindu did not make his
appearance was for him a disheartening proof that his servant had not
hitherto succeeded in discovering Edith's whereabouts or in obtaining
any certain news of her fate.

What did it avail him, that after much thought he had already evolved a
plan for her liberation, if there was no possibility of putting himself
in communication with her!

Believing her to be kept prisoner in a harem tent, his idea was to send
Morar Gopal with a letter to her, fully convinced that the wily Indian
would succeed by stratagem and bribery in reaching her. Before the
banquet he had negotiated with one of the Indian rajahs for the purchase
of an ox-waggon, and if Edith could by his letter be prevailed upon to
make an attempt at flight, it would not in his view be very difficult
to bring her under Morar Gopal's protection to Ambala, where she would
again find herself among her English countrymen.

But this plan was unrealisable so long as he did not even know
where Edith was. Incapable of bearing any longer this condition of
uncertainty, he was just on the point of leaving the tent in order, at
all risks, to hunt for the beloved lady, when a Russian dragoon stepped
behind his chair and informed him with a military salu