"If that be all! quick! the pen, and I will sign."
A bystander, also in the Moghul dress, laughed broadly at the well-worn inuendo on the possibilities of curtained dhoolies in intrigue. "Thou art right, Mahboob," he said, "God only knows."
"His own work," chuckled the Keeper of Virtue. "And the Devil made most of the women here. Now pigs! Canst not start? Am I to be kept here all day?"
As the litter went swaying out between the presented arms of the sentries, the white chrysalis of a Pathan veil stepped lamely down into the causeway. "That, seeing there is no news, will be something to amuse the Queen withal," came the sharp voice.
"There may be news enough, when that fat pig returns, to make it hard to amuse thy mistress, Mussamât Hâfzan," suggested another bystander.
The chrysalis paused. "My mistress! Nay, sahib! Hâfzan is that to herself only. I am for no one save myself. I carry news, and the more the better for my trade. Yet I have not had a real good day for gifts of gratitude from my hearers, since Prince Fukrud-deen, the heir-apparent, died." There was a reckless cynicism in her voice, and he of the Moghul dress broke in hotly.
"Was poisoned, thou meanest, by----"
Hâfzan's shrill laugh rang through the arches.
"No names, Mirza sahib, no names! And 'tis no news surely to have folk poisoned in the fort; as thou wouldst know ere long, may be, if Hâfzan were spiteful. But I name no names--not I! I carry news, that is all."
So, with a limp, showing that the woman within was a cripple, the formless figure passed along the tunnel through the inner barrier, and so across the wide courtyard where the public hall of audience stood blocking the eastern end. It was a massive, square, one-storied building, with a remorseless look in its plain expanse of dull red stone, pierced by toothed arches which yawned darkly into a redder gloom, like monstrous mouths agape for victims. Past this, with its high-set fretted marble baldequin showing dimly against the end wall--whence a locked wicket gave sole entrance from the palace to this seat of justice or injustice--the Pathan veil flitted like a ghost; so, through a narrow passage guarded by the King's own body-guard, into a different world; a cool breezy world of white and gold and blue, clasping a garden set with flowers and fruit. Blue sky, white marble colonnades, and golden domes vaulting and zoning the burnished leaves of the orange trees, where the green fruit hung like emeralds above a tangle of roses and marigolds, chrysanthemums and crimson amaranth. Hâfzan paused among them for a second; then, all unchallenged by any, passed on up the steps of the marble platform, which lies between the Baths and the Private Hall of Audience. That marvelous building where the legend, Cunningly circled into the decorations, still tells the visitor again and again that, "If earth holds a haven of bliss, It is this, it is this, it is this."