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!"