The true woman triumphed in the "wife," for she put out her arms, and raised the forlorn stranger to her bosom, and comforted her with such words as women who have great and loving hearts only can. Then, confiding her to the tender care of her own women, she went on her way to find out the meaning of those dreadful cries.
Nai Dhamaphat, who had been watching in sadness and despair the marvellous expression of Nature's tears and smiles, was the first to mount the spiral staircase, to find his father in the last agonies of death. He takes him up gently, with the assistance of the women, and places him on his luxurious couch.
Everything is forgotten. He sees the pale face of the duchess, his mother, that silent woman, and, catching a glimpse of the bitter sorrow of that patient soul, who was so worthy of his father's love in her right of youth and beauty,--the foremost to love him, the last and only woman of all those whom he had wronged to mourn him,--he bows his head and weeps. The son and the mother are drawn closer than ever. They two had suffered in silence apart. Now they sorrowed together.
"WEEPING MAY ENDURE FOR A NIGHT, BUT JOY COMETH IN THE MORNING."
A year has passed since the occurrence of the fearful events here related.
The river in front of the palace is thronged with a numerous procession of gayly gilded boats and barges.
It is the morning after the cremation of the Duke Chow P'haya Mândtree.
The king, with sixty or more nobles and princes of the land, all armed and in regal attire, presides in the grand hall of the late duke's palace.
The duchess and her two sons, and a fair sprinkling of Siamese ladies and children, are here assembled. A vast number of serfs, soldiers, pages, and women are in waiting.
Around the deep embrasure formed by the windows in the massive wall, there ran a low seat, the space thus occupied being raised as a kind of dais above the general level of the floor. Here were seated on either side of the wall the principal officers, male and female, of the duke's household, headed by the priests of Brahma and of Buddha, who were to play a part in the important drama of the day.
The hall is hung with tapestry of the most original design, for the birds and beasts and flowers which are pictured there had surely never prototypes, unless in some lost geological formation, though patterns very like them seemed to be unanimously adopted as models by all the fair embroideresses of Siam.