Atma - A Romance

But the loveliest of Lehna Singh's possessions was Moti, his daughter

and only child, the fame of whose beauty had even reached Atma in his

mountain home. Of her he had dreamt through boyhood's years, and a

happy consciousness of her proximity foreshadowed the enchanted hour

when he was to behold her and own that his fondest fancies were to her

loveliness as darkness to noonday. Her name he had heard whispered in

the gay throng of her father's guests, on the memorable first evening of

his arrival there; but, strange to tell, next day, when these first

hours in a palace seemed to his excited imagination a dream in which

mingled in wildest confusion the glitter of diamonds, the perfume of a

thousand flowers, the revel of dazzling colors, the bewildering music of

unknown instruments, and the intoxication of wonder and bliss, there

rang through all only one articulate voice, sounding as if from some

leafy ambush amid vague laughter and murmurs of speech, saying: "But I tell you that Rajah Lal Singh means to pluck the rose of Lehna

Singh's garden!"