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QUARTER of a century ago there lived on the bank of a broad river, just at the point where stream meets tide, a Malay Raja and his youthful wife. She has been dead for twenty years, but in this land of brief regrets her memory is still green, the fame of her wit and beauty has become a byword with the people.

She was a girl of royal descent; her name. Raja Maimûnah. Exceeding fair, for a Malay, slight but graceful in figure, with very small hands and feet, an oval face and splendid eyes, glistening blucwhite wells in which floated, lotus-like, the dark iris, flashing or wooing in changeful expression