"'Then tell me this, O astrologer, from your stars: is my noble lady here ever going to have a child, a son?'
"'That question I cannot answer. Unless I have the horoscope of her highness, cast by skilled hands at the time of her birth, I cannot tell which planet rules her destiny.'
"'Alas, we knew not these things among my people down in Amritsar,' I heard my lady murmur.
"'Bah!' exclaimed the serving woman contemptuously. She had flung open her veil, unashamed as are women of her station that I, not her brother or her husband, should gaze upon her face. It was a pleasant enough face of a woman of five-and-twenty years of age; yet, methought, as I looked into it now, that there was unseemly boldness in her eye and even something of wanton abandonment in her manner.
"'Bah! If your stars cannot get us what we wish, what good are they? Better pray at a Hindu shrine to Krishna, god of love revels, than waste time in consulting a Moslem astrologer. That is what I have said all along, dear lady'; and with undoubtedly great affection the woman folded to her breast her now sobbing mistress.
"I turned away, as was proper, and busied myself with a chart of the heavens over which I had been poring when my visitors had arrived. On again raising my eyes, I found that I was alone.
"This incident I had well nigh forgotten, and near a year had elapsed. For some months I had not seen the sultana; she remained in the strict seclusion of the harem. Her highness was unwell, most people said. But I knew the truth; Mirza Shah himself had told it to me, his face beaming with pride and pleasure. At last his dearest hopes were to be realized; the sultana was about to become a mother.
"Meanwhile I was on the alert to cast the horoscope of the child the very hour it should arrive. My preparations had been all made for some time past. Now was I only studying the stars night by night, so that I should be the better prepared to read them correctly.
"At last, almost at the midnight hour, came a messenger running to the tower with the news that a child had been born—a son, Allah be praised. Then I set me instantly to my task, and it was with deep thankfulness I saw that the conjunction of the planets and stars was highly favourable. I carefully recorded the exact position of each heavenly body, and had already read from my rough chart strength and valour for the boy that had just been born, beauty of figure, good endowments of mind, when once again I lifted my eyes to the heavens. But to my horror and dismay at that very instant a streak of fire shot from west to east across the first house, straight toward the planet there ruling, where it disappeared. Just the fraction of a second had passed in the passing of that fiery star. But I knew what it meant, for my grandfather had instructed me in this matter. The child into whose horoscope had come this dread intruder was destined, if he lived beyond infancy, to slay his own father. And with the heaviness of lead this foreknowledge of destiny settled on my soul.
"My head had sunk dejectedly on my breast, when I started up at the touch of a hand on my shoulder, and the greeting of a joyous voice—that of Mirza Shah.