Page:Malabari, Behramji M. - Gujarat and the Gujaratis (1882).djvu/142

126 with a valuable dress and the right to full management of all his affairs. He could not, and if he could would not, attend to any business—it was beneath him.

"The Meer passed his time in the zenana. He so devotedly loved his wife that he never gave her a rival. All the livelong day they were together, this infatuated pair, so absorbed in their new-born happiness. To me, an unmarried Hindu,the Meer's self-abandonment was shocking. He never left the side of his Bibi—she would not part with him. I had not the entree of the zenana, but learnt from the servants that the master and mistress were inseparable. The Meer stole out of his inner chamber once in a fortnight or so, when he had to ask me for a large sum of money, or to go to the mosque. About seven months passed this way, when one day my master's father and friends paid the family a visit. It was this day I learnt that Meer Bakhtáwar expected a son and heir. Great were the rejoicings on this occasion. One day the anxiously-expected heir came to gladden the hearts of the parents and, as it seems to me now, to darken their hitherto brilliant course of life. The demands for money became more