The girls are practically sold by their fathers while yet children, often to wealthy men much older than they.

Love is out of the question.

But what if the poor child, as she grows up, sees some one, among that overplus of men, to whom she, for the first time in her life, takes a fancy?
Then comes a scandal; and one which is often ended swiftly enough by the cutlass.

Wife-murder is but too common among these Hindoos, and they cannot be made to see that it is wrong.

'I kill my own wife.