Were others satisfied? Yes. As we have said, most who knew her envied her lot, but some sneered, and already shook their heads.
One man had looked at the distraught girl, as she was placed in the litter and covered with garlands, who was satisfied, yet not as the rest. More beautiful in the unconsciousness of her excitement than he had ever seen her before,—far more so, to his sight, than she had ever appeared while ordinarily attending the temple worship with her mother, and where he had watched her for months past, Moro Trimmul had joined the throng in order to observe her better. Being a Brahmun, he had closed up to the edge of the litter bare-headed and unnoticed, singing the hymns as one of the attendant priests, and had thus been able to accompany the procession, gloating upon the girl's loveliness with an unholy desire. As the litter was taken up he fell out of the procession, and, watching it depart, sat down alone on the edge of the cliff looking over the plain, and by the side of the small stream which, issuing from the Pâp-nâs temple, fell down the face of the rock in a sheet of foam. A girl's voice aroused him from a reverie which we dare not follow.
"So the Pundit is not dancing back to the town as he came out, before the new Moorlee," she said ironically.
"Nor thou either, Gunga. Dost thou not welcome a new priestess?"
"I marvel at it," she continued, with a sneer; "thou wast looking enough at her. I dance before her? When she dances with us before the Mother, then she will be a true Moorlee—not else. Now I hate her; I shall always hate her."
"Ah! she will never join ye," he returned; "she is of another sort than the rest of ye: Gunga, thou art jealous of her beauty, girl."
"By the Holy Mother, she shall not remain so, Moro Trimmul. She—a widow—to think of setting herself above us! That cat-faced girl! If she has chosen to serve the Mother she must obey her rules, and be one of us. Think ye we will let her come there unless she is?"
The Brahmun shook his head. "I was thinking about her," he said, absently.
The girl sighed. "I thought so," she replied, "and thou wilt love me no more—no more now. Is it not so? say it, if it is to be so."
"Love thee!" returned the man, bitterly—"yes, as thou canst be loved—by gold. Hark ye, Gunga, make her as thou art; get her into my power, and I will give thee a waist-belt of gold."