flesh was hacked and bleeding. At last his passion appeared to exhaust itself, and he gave orders that the suffering girl should be released and laid upon her couch.
While this terrible scene was being enacted in the palace, Saadut, yielding to the urgent entreaties of his father, was flying through the darkness of the night to his native village, where he hoped to be safe for a time. But when Chundra left his wife's room, he went straight to Naudba and demanded angrily if she was sure that Saadut was the lover. In reply Naudba produced her spies, who stated positively that it was Saadut. Then the Prince told some of his retainers to arrest the youth, and bring him to the vaults beneath the Palace. And a huge Arab slave was ordered to have ready a large crucible of boiling lead. In a very short time, however, word was brought to the Prince that Saadut was nowhere to be found. This seemed confirmatory of the lad's guilt, and Chundra offered a reward of a thousand rupees for his capture.
"'Do not seek to deceive me,' roared Chundra."
The next day Chundra visited his wife again. She was in a terrible state, and unable to move, nevertheless, on her firmly refusing to name her lover, he once more beat her; though, in spite of the torture and agony she suffered, not a sound of murmuring escaped her lips. When the night came and there was no word of Saadut having been captured, the brutal Prince repaired once more to Rajkooverbai's chamber. But she was now in a condition that his brutality could no longer affect her, for she was quite unconscious, and such a pitiable spectacle from the wounds he had inflicted that few men could have looked upon her without being moved. But Chundra was a Rajput Prince, and pity was unknown to him, when he considered that the honour of his house was at stake, and that wrongs were to be avenged, so, all unconscious as she was, he beat her again and again.
A few hours later, when the Indian dawn was breaking with a dazzling splendour of crimson and gold, poor Princess Rajkooverbai heaved a deep sigh, and, with a smile upon her beautiful face, passed away to one of the seven heavens, where man's brutal passions avail not.
When the Prince was informed of her death, he ordered a report to be spread that she had died of snake-bite, for he knew that, though he was the son of Raja Jit Singh—the Lion of Victories—he might have to answer to the all-powerful Kaisar-i-Hind, the Empress of India, who would tolerate no murder in her dominions if she could help it. Time had been when an Indian Prince could have beaten a dozen of his wives to death, and all that it would have led to would have been a feud, perhaps, between himself and some of his
