Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/688

 648 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [ Chap. arrivals and departures were subjected to a most careful search. Vidya could find no possible way to send in- formation to Sundara, as her apartments were occupied by officers of the detective department. The police were trying to detect a thief, that was all that the people knew; no inkling as toa guilty connection with the royal zezana was obtained by any outsider, and Sundara had no thought of all this investigations having been aimed at the detec- tion of his crime. As usual dressed in his best attire,—scented with atar extracted from the rose and jessamine, with his turban and apparel sparkling with diamonds —his head full of love’s reveries, Sundara entered the subterranean passage in the evening and ap- peared at the other end of the hole. The police officers looked at each other and smiled. Sundara could not recognise them in the dim light which the police had purposely kept in the apartments. He sat smiling by the side of one who wore Vidya’s dress and attemped the gay amours with her to which he was accustomed ; but the false lady hid her face behind the veil and would not show any sign of reciprocating his warm sentiments,—at which he feared she was angry with him for some unknown cause. The prince looked helplessly around, and asked the maids to intervene in his behalf to make his lady-love as kind to him as she had ever been. The maids responded to his call and all at once seized him—his lady-love also was not slow in joining her maids in according him the reception which a thief deserved at the hands of the police. ] | ৃ