'Do not ignore that fact, Lady Maulevrier.

What has become of that fortune--two hundred thousand pounds in money and jewels.

It was known to have passed into Lord Maulevrier's possession after my father was put away by his paid instruments.
'How dare you bring that vile charge against the dead ?' 'There are men living in India who know the truth of that charge: men who were at Bisnagar when my father, sick and heartbroken, was shut up in his deserted harem, hemmed in by spies and traitors, men with murder in their faces.

There are those who know tint he was strangled by one of those wretches, that a grave was dug for him under the marble floor of his zenana, a grave in which his bones were found less than a year ago, in my presence, and fitly entombed at my bidding.

He was said to have disappeared of his own free will--to have left his palace under cover of night, and sought refuge from possible treachery in another province; but there were those, and not a few, who knew the real history of his disappearance--who knew, and at the time were ready to testify in any court of justice, that he had been got rid of by the Ranee's agents, and at Lord Maulevrier's instigation, and that his possessions in money and jewels had been conveyed in the palankins that carried the Ranee and her women to his lordship's summer retreat near Madras.