the same formal attitude (almost that of a soldier in a state of
"attention") which she had assumed at my entrance; at the same time
she let go the drapery which she had held over her lap whilst
sitting and allowed it to fall to the ground.

The next morning after breakfast I was visited by my lady's
secretary--the only European, except the doctor, whom she retained
in her household. This secretary, like the doctor, was Italian,
but he preserved more signs of European dress and European
pretensions than his medical fellow-slave. He spoke little or no
English, though he wrote it pretty well, having been formerly
employed in a mercantile house connected with England. The poor
fellow was in an unhappy state of mind. In order to make you
understand the extent of his spiritual anxieties, I ought to have
told you that the doctor {22} (who had sunk into the complete
Asiatic, and had condescended accordingly to the performance of
even menial services) had adopted the common faith of all the
neighbouring people, and had become a firm and happy believer in
the divine power of his mistress. Not so the secretary. When I
had strolled with him to a distance from the building, which
rendered him safe from being overheard by human ears, he told me in
a hollow voice, trembling with emotion, that there were times at
which he doubted the divinity of "miledi." I said nothing to
encourage the poor fellow in that frightful state of scepticism
which, if indulged, might end in positive infidelity. I found that
her ladyship had rather arbitrarily abridged the amusements of her
secretary, forbidding him from shooting small birds on the
mountain-side. This oppression had arouses in him a spirit of
inquiry that might end fatally, perhaps for himself, perhaps for
the "religion of the place."