No one met them; they
lighted their own lamps in the outer court, and passed unquestioned
through court and gallery until they came to where SHE lay. A
corpse was the only inhabitant of the palace, and the isolation
from her kind which she had sought so long was indeed complete.
That morning thirty-seven servants had watched every motion of her
eye: its spell once darkened by death, every one fled with such
plunder as they could secure. A little girl, adopted by her and
maintained for years, took her watch and some papers on which she
had set peculiar value. Neither the child nor the property were
ever seen again. Not a single thing was left in the room where she
lay dead, except the ornaments upon her person. No one had
ventured to touch these; even in death she seemed able to protect
herself. At midnight her countryman and the missionary carried her
out by torchlight to a spot in the garden that had been formerly
her favourite resort, and here they buried the self-exiled lady.--
From "THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS," by Eliot Warburton.
Footnotes:
{1} A "compromised" person is one who has been in contact with
people or things supposed to be capable of conveying infection.
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