“Now I’m interested, indeed!”
“Well you may be, when you hear all. We’ve here one once a harem beauty, who, having lost her power to fascinate, was committing her life to that hag-cunning belonging to old women who supplement their decaying power by wickedness, fox-like and serpentine.”
“The old, old story; yet I thank God if her life be sweetened.”
“Hers is a strange story.”
“May I know it?”
“Yes; it is, as I’ve gathered it in scraps, a sad romance. She was born of Georgian parents, among the mountains of Armenia, and gifted, in her youth, as are most of those of her sex in that country, with unusual personal beauty. She early attracted the attention of the monsters who dealt in human flesh, and a Georgian noble unrighteously claiming her family as his serfs, bartered away Nourahmal to merchants seeking recruits for Mameluke harems. She became, in time, part of the retinue of a sheik by the name of Azrael, a desperate adventurer, who, on account of his blood-deeds, was called by his followers the ‘Angel of Death,’ His luxurious and desperate way of living justified his claim to Turkish extraction; his adroitness and avidity for intrigue stamped him as a Mameluke.”
“Nourahmal? Azrael? Why, these must be the same of whom I’ve heard Sir Charleroy speak?” queried Cornelius.
“The same!”
“She comes out of the past as one from the dead!”