Annie Mansfield was not long before she mastered her emotions.

She had learned to do so in a bitter school.

Beaten for the slightest fault, or at the mere caprice of one of her many mistresses, she had learned to suffer pain without a tear; to assume a submissive attitude under the greatest provocation; to receive, without attempting to defend herself, punishment for faults she had not committed; and to preserve an appearance of cheerfulness, when her heart seemed breaking at the hopelessness of any deliverance from her fate.

For the last six months she had been specially unhappy, for when Seringapatam had been besieged she had hoped that, when it was captured, her countrymen would search the Palace and see that, this time, no English captive remained behind.

Her disappointment, then, when she heard that peace had been made, and that the English army was to march away, without even an attempt to see that the condition for the release of captives was faithfully carried out, had for a time completely crushed her, and all hope had forsaken her.
Thus, then, while she had been, for a moment, overwhelmed at finding that her preserver from the tiger was a countryman in disguise, and that he was willing to make an attempt to rescue her; yet in a few minutes she stifled her sobs, hastily thrust back the hair that had fallen over her face, uncoiled herself from her crouching position in the angle of the divan, and rose to her feet.
"I can hardly believe it to be true," she said, in a low voice.