A MALAY ROMANCE
Raja Iskander received this missive whilst yet undecided what course to take in the untoward disaster that had befallen him. The letter did not greatly help him to arrive at a decision, and he was still discussing with his chiefs who should have the honour of pursuing and punishing the abductor when the twenty-four hours expired.
Neither Iskander nor any of his people ever started on that quest, and Raja Slêman carried Maimûnah in safety to his own country.
The disconsolate husband, whose ideas were in accord with a civilisation beyond the education or sympathetic comprehension of his subjects, decided to divorce his faithless wife and leave her lover to marriage and the punishment of his own conscience. It is a painful fact that this conduct earned him not the admiration but the contempt of his people.
Iskander had one revenge: he discovered amongst Maimûnah's women two who had carried messages between the lovers. One was a woman of twenty-five, the other a girl of fourteen, and both were incontinently strangled.
As for Slêman and Maimûnah, they were duly married, and she bore him a daughter in all respects like her mother, though not, the old people say, her
189
