Little Ma'asuma looked scared. "Lo! There I have told thee! and I said I would hold my tongue! Because, see you, Gharîb-Beg married and left her in the old days; whether rightly as some say, or foolishly, as others, I know not; but 'twas so. She was religious for long years and when I went to the school to learn the Holy Book, we became friends. And oh! Babar, thou wilt never know how good she was to me when I fell in love with my lord--and he with me." The roguish face, looking more like itself than he had seen it for months, nestled on to his shoulder.
He put his arm round the slender figure and drew it to him mechanically, grateful that her words had given him time to pull himself together.
Gharîb-Beg's wife! The woman he had called "Mahâm--his moon!"
"So." he said with an effort, "she was my cousin's wife; but wherefore ... was I not told?"
Ma'asuma pouted. "Because I did not at first. And then when she came, she would not have it--why I know not--save that mayhap, before the son was coming, I wanted thy praise for--for such things as verses. And now, my lord must say naught. Promise me he will not, or she will be vexed."
"I will not vex her," he said diplomatically, and changed the subject adroitly by picking up a tiny red-silk cap half embroidered with seed pearls on which his wife had been working, and which had fallen on the path.
"Lo!" he laughed, "is that the way to treat my son's head-dress!" And he held the ridiculous little object out on his forefinger and twirled it round. So the question passed. But he was of too frank a nature to palliate concealment and that night when the moon had risen, he found himself once more confronting a tall, slender figure that stood, aggressively this time, against a marble pillar. But there was no swinging lamp to cast a rose reflection between them.
"Yea! Zahir-ud-din Mahomed Babar," said the proud voice. "It is even as my lord hath divined. I knew. I was the lad who brought my lord his mistress's message--which I had written. It was to me that my lord gave his 'I love thee, ever, ever!' This being so, what else was there left to do, save what was done?"
The finality of her words struck Babar like a blow. He never minced matters even with himself.
"Naught," he said gloomily. "Naught." Then he added, "But now?"