Victoria listened politely, answering if necessary; yet her interest was concentrated in peering through the slits in the wooden shutter of the nearest window. She did not know Algiers well enough to recognize landmarks; but after driving for what seemed like fifteen or twenty minutes through streets where lights began to turn the twilight blue, she caught a glint of the sea. Almost immediately the trotting mules stopped, and the negress Hsina, hiding Victoria's hat in the folds of her haïck, turned the handle of the door.
Victoria looked out into azure dusk, and after the closeness of the shuttered carriage, thankfully drew in a breath of salt-laden air. One quick glance showed her a street near the sea, on a level not much above the gleaming water. There were high walls, evidently very old, hiding Arab mansions once important, and there were other ancient dwellings, which had been partly transformed for business or military uses by the French. The girl's hasty impression was of a melancholy neighbourhood which had been rich and stately long ago in old pirate days, perhaps.
There was only time for a glance to right and left before a nailed door opened in the flatness of a whitewashed wall which was the front of an Arab house. No light shone out, but the opening of the door proved that some one had been listening for the sound of carriage wheels.
"Descend, lady. I will follow with thy baggage," said Hsina.
The girl obeyed, but she was suddenly conscious of a qualm as she had to turn from the blue twilight, to pass behind that half-open door into darkness, and the mystery of unknown things.
Before she had time to put her foot to the ground the door was thrown wide open, and two stout Negroes dressed exactly alike in flowing white burnouses stepped out of the house to stand on either side the carriage door. Raising their arms as high as their heads they made two white walls of their long cloaks between which Victoria could pass, as if enclosed in a narrow aisle. Hsina came close upon her heels; and as they reached the threshold of the house the white-robed black servants dropped their arms, followed the two women, and shut the nailed door. Then, despite the dimness of the place, they bowed their heads turning aside as if humbly to make it evident that their unworthy eyes did not venture to rest upon the veiled form of their mistress's guest. As for Hsina, she, too, was veiled, though her age and ugliness would have permitted her face to be revealed without offence to Mussulman ideas of propriety. It was mere vanity on her part to preserve the mystery as dear to the heart of the Moslem woman as to the jealous prejudice of the man.
A faint glittering of the walls told Victoria that the corridor she had entered was lined with tiles; and she could dimly see seats let in like low shelves along its length, on either side. It was but a short passage, with a turn into a second still shorter. At the end of this hung a dark curtain, which Hsina lifted for Victoria to pass on, round another turn into a wider hall, lit by an Arab lamp with glass panes framed in delicately carved copper. The chain which suspended it from cedar beams swayed slightly, causing the light to move from colour to colour of the old tiles, and to strike out gleams from the marble floor and ivory-like pillars set into the walls. The end of this corridor also was masked by a curtain of wool, dyed and woven by the hands of nomad tribes, tent-dwellers in the desert; and when Hsina had lifted it, Victoria saw a small square court with a fountain in the centre.
It was not on a grand scale, like those in the palace owned by Nevill Caird; but the fountain was graceful and charming, ornamented with the carved, bursting pomegranates beloved by the Moors of Granada, and the marble columns which supported a projecting balcony were wreathed with red roses and honeysuckle.
On each of the four sides of the quadrangle, paved with black and white marble, there were little windows, and large glass doors draped on the inside with curtains thin enough to show faint pink and golden lights.
"O my mistress, Lella M'Barka, I have brought thy guest!" cried Hsina, in a loud, sing-song voice, as if she were chanting; whereupon one of the glass doors opened, letting out a rosy radiance, and a Bedouin woman-servant dressed in a striped foutah appeared on the threshold. She was old, with crinkled grey hair under a scarlet handkerchief, and a blue cross was tattooed between her eyes.