The veiled figure caught him up quickly. "Now? She must not know; she must never know."
Babar stood still and leaning his head on his arm against the pilaster, looked out into the garden. It lay silvern, peaceful, a thing of perfect beauty, a place wherein no sinful man should walk or set foot. "Lo!" came the sweet voice. "I have kept--I will keep my lord's ring. It was not he who broke faith, but I."
"The Most-Noble is very good," he said simply and left her. There was no more to say.
Had there been more, there would have been little time for it.
A hasty twinkling light showed ere long adown the palace colonnade. Voices came in excited whispers. Her Highness, the Begum, was not well. God send it might be nothing; but 'twas the fateful month.
Fateful, indeed! All that night long Babar waited in a fever of anxiety, listening to the fitful wails, the thousand and one slight sounds of sudden, direful sickness. What were they doing to his Ma'asuma? his little Ma'asuma, his love, his heart's darling, his little one? Would he ever see her again?
The dawn came, and still he watched, still he waited. The birds in the bushes began to sing--to sing forsooth! while she lay in the shadow of death! Heartless! cruel! For she must die! so small, so slender, how could she stand out against those long hours of agony. Noon passed and still he waited, every nerve in his strong young body wearied by imagined pain.
It was not till sun-setting that a voice roused him as he sat crouched in on himself:
"My lord has a daughter."
He was on his feet in a second, setting the idea aside as trivial. What was son or daughter to him beside his dearest dear?