CHAPTER I.
In bed-chamber.
It took Luthfunnisha almost a year to complete her return journey to Agra and thence to move down to Saptagram where Kapalkundala lived over a year as Nabokumar's wife. The same evening, when Luthfunnisha was out on her excursion amidst the wood, Kapalkundala sat in her bed-room in an abstracted mood of mind. She was not the self-same Kapalkundala whom the reader saw on the sea-beach, unadorned, with her loose curls flowing down her waist. The prophecy of Shyamasundari has materialised and the hermit girl with the touch of the philosopher's stone has bloomed into a full-fledged housewife.
Now the mass of her raven-dark hair that once hung out in heavy serpent-like coils, sweeping down her waist-line, has been gathered up and twisted in a massive knot that perched high on the back of her head. The braiding of locks even was worked up into an elaborate art-work and the fine skilled designs and figures displayed in the pleating spoke highly of Shyamasundari's finished style of hair-dressing. Every detail was faithfully attended to. Even the chaplet of flowers that encircled, like a coronet, the base of her braided coil, was not lost sight of. The unbraided locks
