Robin looked full of animation; his eyes told, before his lips spoke, that a new thought had flashed on his brain. “Is it not possible,” he cried, “that some European child, whom all supposed to have been murdered at the Mutiny time, may have been spared to endure the worse fate of being buried in a zenana?”
“Oh, what an idea!” exclaimed Alicia, clasping her hands and turning sparkling eyes on Robin. “My own uncle and aunt and their two little girls were killed in the Mutiny, more than eleven years ago—at least we always thought so.”
“At what place?” inquired Mr. Hartley.
Alicia mentioned a distant city.
“That is very far away—not in the limits of the Panjab. And one thing is evident,” continued the missionary—“Kripá Dé is undoubtedly a Kashmiri Brahmin, so no sister of his could be English.”
Alicia looked disappointed; but Robin said quickly, “Are you sure that the widow is Kripá Dé’s sister?”
“I think that the bibis said so,” answered Alicia.
“Oh, but you might not have understood the bibis; or the bibis might not have understood you; or—but here comes Kripá Dé himself with Harold. Let’s have the real truth from his lips.—Kripá Dé,” he continued, addressing the convert, “are you and Premi the children of one mother?”
“No,” replied the youth. “Premi was only my little playmate when she was a child.”
The negative reply made Alicia’s heart beat fast with excitement. “Oh, question him more closely!” she exclaimed, feeling more distressed than she had ever done before at her knowledge of Urdu being so imperfect.