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66 wept with her? That was all Matangini remembered, and for a moment the memory of duty, virtue, principle ceased to fling its sombre shadow on the brightness of the impure felicity in which her heart [revelled]. There was a fire in that voluptuous eye,—there was a flow on that moonbeam brow, and as she stood leaning with her well-rounded arm on the damask-covered back of the sofa, her beautiful head resting on the palm of her hand over which, as over the heaving bosom, strayed the luxuriant tresses of raven hue;—as thus she stood, Madhav might well have felt sure earth had not to show a more dazzling vision of female loveliness.

"I had thought," she cried at length in a voice which trembled from emotion, "I had thought that never again would human ears, not even your own, hear from my lips the language I breathed to-night, ah! I know not what I felt."

"Matangini," said Madhav, speaking for the first time since the storm of passion had burst, "I too had thought we could part without a struggle, but you have—you see what you have done. But," continued he, his eyes again suffused with tears, "you have made many sacrifices, make one last sacrifice. Root out the feeling from a heart on which no impurity should leave a spot. Forget."

"Blame me not," she said, and then interrupting herself, she bent down her head to hide the tear that gushed again with the current of feeling. "Yes, reproach me, Madhav," she continued, "censure me, teach me, for I have been