In a sorrowful whisper he promised to comply.
"Then farewell," she said. "Farewell Prasad, may God love thee as truly as I have done."
"Farewell"? he exclaimed interrogatively. "I will not leave thee yet alone."
"Prasad," she returned. "It is my will to be alone. Nay, I shall not be alone. Again I say, farewell to thee, for thine eyes must not behold my last moment."
He embraced her once more, laid her gently back amid the pillows, then rose obediently to her command. He paused on the threshold of the entrance to gaze for the last time upon her face. In its beautiful features there was discernible neither sign of weakness nor of fear—her spirit remained heroic to the end. He covered his eyes with his hands and passed forth.
Within the tent a profound, mysterious, silence fell, as the darkness of night descended on the land. The Rani clasped her hands upon her breast as her lips murmured a last prayer.
"Great God of Gods. O most holy, omnipotent One. If I have sinned against the laws of my caste, it was for the love of my country. Surely thou wilt forgive a woman who has tried to inspire others to be brave and just. O India," she cried, raising herself with difficulty upon her side and stretching forth her arms, "farewell. Farewell my people, my brave soldiers whom I have loved to lead in battle against the foe. Not forever shall their horsemen ride triumphantly through the land. A day will come when their law shall be no longer obeyed, and our temples and palaces rise anew from their ruins. Farewell! Farewell! O Gods of my fathers, be with me now."
She drew the folds of a shawl over her face to hide her death agony, and again lay down. The blackness of night grew deeper, the silence more intense. Presently, strange, warrior forms seemed to appear from the unknown and filled the Rani's tent. One supremely beautiful figure, in dazzling raiment, came forth to enfold the dying woman in her arms.
In a little, a wail of lamentation rose across the intervening space between the camps of the two armies. The Foreign soldiers asked its meaning of one another.
The answer might have been, that the spirit of the heroic Lachmi Bai had been gathered to the protecting arms of Param-eswara, the merciful, the just, the all supreme God, alike of the Hindu, the Mohammedan, and the Christian.