Something that was neither silent nor soft disturbed the lady from her reverie; the voice of the great Sheikh, in a tone of altitude and harshness, with him most usual. He was in an adjacent apartment, vowing that he would sooner eat the mother of some third person, who was attempting to influence him, than adopt the suggestion offered. Then there were softer and more persuasive tones from his companion, but evidently ineffectual. Then the voices of both rose together in emulous clamour—one roaring like a bull, the other shrieking like some wild bird; one full of menace, and the other taunting and impertinent. All this was followed by a dead silence, which continuing, Eva assumed that the Sheikh and his companion had quitted his tent. While her mind was recurring to those thoughts which occupied them previously to this outbreak, the voice of Fakredeen was heard outside her tent, saying, ‘Rose of Sharon, let me come into the harem;’ and, scarcely waiting for permission, the young Emir, flushed and excited, entered, and almost breathless threw himself on the divan.
‘Who says I am a coward?’ he exclaimed, with a glance of devilish mockery. ‘I may run away sometimes, but what of that? I have got moral courage, the only thing worth having since the invention of gunpowder. The beast is not killed, but I have looked into the den; ‘tis something. Courage, my fragrant Rose, have faith in me at last. I may make an imbroglio sometimes, but, for getting out of a scrape, I would back myself against any picaroon in the Levant; and that is saying a good deal.’
‘Another imbroglio?’
‘Oh, no! the same; part of the great blunder. You must have heard us raging like a thousand Afrites. I never knew the great Sheikh so wild.’
‘And why?’
‘He should take a lesson from Mehemet Ali,’ continued the Emir. ‘Giving up Syria, after the conquest, was a much greater sacrifice than giving up plunder which he has not yet touched. And the great Pasha did it as quietly as if he were marching into Stamboul instead, which he might have done if he had been an Arab instead of a Turk. Everything comes from Arabia, my dear Eva, at least everything that is worth anything. We two ought to thank our stars every day that we were born Arabs.’
‘And the great Sheikh still harps upon this ransom?’ inquired Eva.
‘He does, and most unreasonably. For, after all, what do we ask him to give up? a bagatelle.’
‘Hardly that,’ said Eva; ‘two millions of piastres can scarcely be called a bagatelle.’
‘It is not two millions of piastres,’ said Fakre-deen; ‘there is your fallacy, ‘tis the same as your grandfather’s. In the first place, he would have taken one million; then half belonged to me, which reduces his share to five hundred thousand; then I meant to have borrowed his share of him.’