Miluda, however, was not waiting for her in the garden. The girl was escorted upstairs, perhaps to show her how much more important was the favourite wife of the marabout than a mere Roumia, an unmarried maiden.
A meal had been cleared away, in a room larger and better furnished than Saidee's and on the floor stood a large copper incense-burner, a thin blue smoke filtering through the perforations, clouding the atmosphere and loading it with heavy perfume. Behind the mist Victoria saw a divan, spread with trailing folds of purple velvet, stamped with gold; and something lay curled up on a huge tiger-skin, flung over pillows.
As the blue incense wreaths floated aside the curled thing on the tiger skin moved, and the light from a copper lamp like Saidee's, streamed through huge coloured lumps of glass, into a pair of brilliant eyes. A delicate brown hand, ringed on each finger, waved away the smoke of a cigarette it held, and Victoria saw a small face, which was like the face of a perfectly beautiful doll. Never had she imagined anything so utterly pagan; yet the creature was childlike, even innocent in its expression, as a baby tigress might be innocent.
Having sat up, the little heathen goddess squatted in her shrine, only bestirring herself to show the Roumia how beautiful she was, and what wonderful jewellery she had. She thought, that without doubt, the girl would run back jealously to the sister (whom Miluda despised) to pour out floods of description. She herself had heard much of Lella Saïda, and supposed that unfortunate woman had as eagerly collected information about her; but it was especially piquant that further details of enviable magnificence should be carried back by the forlorn wife's sister.
The Ouled Naïl tinkled at the slightest movement, even with the heaving of her bosom, as she breathed, making music with many necklaces, and long earrings that clinked against them. Dozens of old silver cases, tubes, and little jewelled boxes containing holy relics; hairs of Mohammed's beard; a bit of web spun by the sacred spider which saved his life; moles' feet blessed by marabouts, and texts from the Koran; all these hung over Miluda's breast, on chains of turquoise and amber beads. They rattled metallically, and her bracelets and anklets tinkled. Some luscious perfume hung about her, intoxicatingly sweet. A thick, braided clump of hair was looped on each side of the small face painted white as ivory, and her eyes, under lashes half an inch long, were bright and unhuman as those of an untamed gazelle.
"Wilt thou sit down?" she asked, waving the hand with the cigarette towards a French chair, upholstered in red brocade. "The Sidi gave me that seat because I asked for it. He gives me all I ask for."
"I will stand," answered Victoria.
"Oh, it is true, then, thou speakest Arab! I had heard so. I have heard much of thee and of thy youth and beauty. I see that my women did not lie. But perhaps thou art not as young as I am, though I have been a wife for a year, and have borne a beautiful babe. I am not yet sixteen."
Victoria did not answer, and the Ouled Naïl gazed at her unwinkingly, as a child gazes.
"Thou hast travelled much, even more than the marabout himself, hast thou not?" she inquired, graciously. "I have heard that thou hast been to England. Are there many Arab villages there, and is it true that the King was deposed when the Sultan, the head of our faith, lost his throne?"