"News?" echoed the latter, craft growing to her face. "What news? Somewhat that Diswunt would not tell thee? Out with it Âto? Tell me thy end--God knows but it may fit mine, since, so they say, extremities meet."
"Aye," assented Âtma sombrely. "That is why I seek thee. Hate and love are not far distant with us womenkind."
Then, suddenly she reached out a tense, nervous hand to lay upon Siyah Yamin's smooth round arm.
"Lo! Sister! thou hearest all things here, and I--I hear nothing! What news is there of the King's Luck? Hath he in truth yielded it to the Englishman?"
Siyah Yamin stared for a second, then burst into a perfect cascade of high-pitched laughter.
"Said I not truly," she gurgled, "that extremes meet! See! I will send for a cooling sherbet, and I will tell thee all!"
It was not all, it did not even approach the truth, but it served her purpose. So she sate, watching the effect of each word, and Âtma Devi listened, weighing each word, both with the same indescribable intuitions of their sex, appraising this, discounting that, until at last the latter rose, tall, dark, menacing, to look down on the other, crouching like a coiled snake among her cushions.
"Yea! as thou hast said, Siyâl, true loyalty would lend itself even to theft, or rather to the snatching of luck from ill luck, and the protection of the King from evil magic; and so I will tell Diswunt--I, his mistress by inheritance. And to give it to the keeping of the Beneficent Ladies as I have said were well done. The Lady Hamida, the King's mother, carries his honour close day and night, even as she once carried him. And Khânzada Gulbadan Begum hath wit more than most men, so I will aid if I can, being bound also to the King's honour. But hearken, Siyah! Lo! draw thy veil so--let me have it." She sank to her knees and leaning forward caught the loose end of the courtesan's tinsel veil and flung it round her own head also. "Now let us swear once more, as sisters of the veil, to be true to each other until the death--until the death--dost hear?"
Taken by surprise Siyah Yamin shrank back from those blazing eyes, paled, faltered; finally, compelled thereto by the grip of a nature stronger than her own, muttered faintly:
"I swear."