But Premi was not dying. She had been severely, mercilessly kicked and beaten, but no vital part was injured. What she needed was kindness and care, and that she found in the home of her cousin.
The result of her case, which filled many columns in local papers and was the sensation of the day in England when the account of it reached that land, may be summed up here in few words. Premi, or Miranda, as we may now call her, could never be persuaded to tell at whose hands she had received her terrible beating. Some feeling, perhaps of delicacy, perhaps of pity for her old female companions, prevented her from letting out the secret. From the impossibility of knowing who was the actual offender, no inmate of the zenana received the due reward of her barbarous conduct. Alicia suspected Darobti; but neither her name nor that of any other bibi escaped the lips of Miranda. She seemed to wish to draw a thick purdah over the past.
Thákar Dás narrowly escaped very severe punishment by being able to prove that it was not he, but a brother since dead, who had brought Miranda Macfinnis into the fort. The Hindu declared that he did not know that she was English; that he had taken her in from motives of pure compassion; and though few believed his vehement assertions, the contrary could not be proved. But the chief could not so easily meet the second charge—that of having directed two attacks on the mission bungalow, in the first of which an Englishman had been wounded and a Hindu youth violently carried away. The attempt to poison Kripá Dé aggravated the offence: though it was not proved that Thákar Dás actually committed the crime, there was strong suspicion against him. A very heavy fine was inflicted, with long imprisonment in default of payment. Thákar Dás was a disgraced and ruined man. Unable otherwise to pay the heavy penalty imposed, the Hindu had to give up his fort and the land held for centuries by his forefathers, and, accompanied by the female portion of his family, quit for ever that part of the country.
Mr. Thole had expressed his opinion that Chand Kor should be compelled to return to Mrs. Hartley the gold bracelet which she had tried to win from her by meanly bartering for it a bauble not worth a tenth part of its value, and not even legally her own. But Harold declined such reparation in behalf of his wife. “Mrs. Hartley threw the bracelet to the women of her own free will,” he said, “and, I am sure, would not desire such restitution.”
“Was I right, darling?” he said to Alicia, after his return from an interview with Mr. Thole.
“Quite right,” answered his wife. “I would never wish to take back anything given for the Lord or His work.”
Alicia never knew the fate of that jewel. It was sold ere long with other valuables to purchase the bare necessaries of life for Chand Kor and Darobti, who had to pound their own rice and grind their own corn for themselves.
The evening after the conclusion of the trial, which lasted for some days, Alicia said joyfully to her husband, “Now one sheaf at least is gathered home. Premi—I mean Miranda—is our own, quite our own. She has almost recovered now, and will soon, I think, lose all trace of her bruises, and look lovelier than ever.”
“You say that Premi is quite our own, my love,” observed Harold; “but are you her nearest relative? I think that you have more than once mentioned that she has a brother in England.”
“Oh! Cousin Gilbert, who was at home preparing to go to college in the Mutiny year, and so escaped the fate of his poor parents.”