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122 he answered with an assumed lightness of air which was too transparent to deceive the eyes of affection, "Why, who told you that? What have I to grieve for?"

"Do not try to deceive me, love," returned Tara in a tone of earnest but affectionate remonstrance. "I know you care little for me or my love, but to a woman, her husband is—I cannot say what he is not. Deceive the world, but you cannot deceive me."

"You are surely mad to think me wretched," said Mathur, in a tone that most significantly contradicted his words. "What put that fancy in you?"

"Yourself" replied she. "Listen: you have many things to think of; your taluqs, your lawsuits, your rents, your kacharis, your houses, gardens, servants, family, and of much more: I have nothing to care for, but my husband and my daughter. Do you wonder then that for the last three days I have noted before others, that your step had lost its wonted pride? That your eyes wandered and had a strange look; that you spoke less often, and that when you smiled, your smile came not from your heart; nay, can you suppose that a mother's eye would forget to note that her child met not from its father his former warm embrace? Yes, often during these three days has Bindu held your finger, and played round your knee, and you have not spoken to her; and even my sister," here an arch smile, which passed off as soon as it came, momentarily interrupted the earnestness of Tara's manner, "and