The colours faded so slowly.

It seemed like watching some helpless creature bleed to death silently, growing greyer minute by minute and feebler.

I did not want to watch, but go indoors where the lamps were lighted and it was warm and cosy.

I used to cry dreadfully, when I could get away by myself where Aunt Felicia and the maids could not see me, cry for my father--he resigned the Commissionership, you know, when I was sent home and took service in Afghanistan under the Ameer--and for my darling friend, Mrs.Pereira, and for the Sultan-i-bagh, where I knew strangers lived now.

For the lotus tank and orange grove, and all my little tame animals and my pretty play-places I should never, never see any more"-- Overcome by which intimate memories, Damaris' grave voice--which had taken on a chanting cadence, at once novel and singularly pleasing to the young man's ear--quavered and broke.
"Poor little exiled princess!" he cried, all his facile kindness to the fore again.