Page:The Wreck.djvu/172

168

THE WRECK

Umesh now came out with an excuse to engage her in conversation. "You haven't taken any pan for a long time, mother," he said. '1 got some ready at the other house and brought it along with me," and he handed her some pan wrapped in paper.

Kamala awoke to the consciousness that dusk was falling and she sprang to her feet.

"Uncle Chakrabartti has sent a carriage for you," added Umesh.

Kamala entered the bungalow for a last look round 

before driving home. In the principal room was a fireplace of the English pattern in which a fire could be lighted for warmth in winter, and on the mantel- piece above it a kerosene lamp was burning. Kamala stopped to lay the packet of pan on the mantelpiece and was on the point of resuming her perambulations when her eye caught her own name in Ramesh's hand- writing on the paper of the parcel.

"Where did you find that paper?" she asked Umesh.

"It was lying in a corner of master's room. I picked it up when the floor was being swept."

Kamala took it up and began to read. It was the letter in which Ramesh had made a clean breast to Hemnalini and which with his extraordinary careless- ness he must have thrown aside.

She read the letter through.

"Why do you stand there and say nothing, mother ?" asked Umesh ; "it's getting dark."

One might have heard a pin drop in the room and Kamala's expression alarmed Umesh. "Don't you hear me, mother? We must be going home; it's late," he pleaded; but she did not stir till one of Uncle's servants came in and announced pointedly that the carriage had been standing for a long time.

Digitized by Google