Like something else also; so that old Akbar felt a shiver run through him, lest, after all, his first impression should prove right, and this be no more than a simulacrum,--a ghost, a changeling, come to possess the usually indifferent lazy Miss-baba. Yet when, all of a sudden, she raised her white muslin skirt high in both hands and began to sing, at the top of her voice, the wicked little love song which Vincent Dering had sung the first day she met him, old Akbar's dread turned to sheer wonder. This was not a ghost, but a devil; reckless, unrestrained, with a fling of white arms, a kick of white feet, all held to rhythm by the outrageous frivolity of the song, until, with that last staccato note, she threw herself in a chair, breathless, gurgling with laughter and sheer mischief.
"Lo! Akbar," she gasped, "my grandmother never danced like that, did she? I don't believe she was my grandmother! I believe you are telling stories!"
Akbar looked wise, and thrust out his folded hands in cringing protest. "The most noble says true, Anâri Begum never danced thus. But there is the grandfather, Bun-avâtar-sahib bahadur, to be accounted for also."
Laila frowned. The reminder brought back the other side of the story, to which she had listened so often from her guardian's lips, while her pretended indifference masked a real pride. Of her grandfather's gallantry, his good looks, his love of adventure. And of someone else, also, who had always had a secret attraction for the girl. That most beautiful woman in Rome, the companion of princes, the divine singer, the best, the dearest--
Laila's laughter failed her; she rose, and going over to the window looked out absently, startling the pigeon into flight. The sun turned its breast purple, and green, and gold, as it fluttered down to renew its pirouetting on a cupola below, just above the river. And below that again was the roof of the balcony where she had sat with Vincent. The girl's eyes grew soft. She understood now. That best, that dearest, that most beautiful, must have loved her guardian. That was the secret of his remembrance. How could one ever forget that one had sat in a balcony hand in hand? So content, yet saying so little--only feeling. But he had said some things. He had said she was beautiful, that she ought always to wear that dress, and she had told him she could not,--that she must send it back--that he must learn to like her as much in her ordinary clothes--that he would never see her in that dress again. But, after all, why not--if--?
She turned suddenly to the go-between. "There is no need to take them back to-day," she said, sharply; "but thou canst tell the person who sent them--he who claims cousinship--that I will not keep them, that I know nothing of them; that he must send and take them away."
Akbar, with an inward determination to do nothing so palpably foolish, salaamed down to the ground. The Presence, he said, in doing this showed her dignity; it was undoubtedly the right course to pursue. But, in the mean time, would the Begum-sahiba--she must excuse a tongue which could not always bear with the paltry present, which remembered the facts of the past, the possibilities of the future--not temper her noble severity with the usual courtly favour? Her cousin's grandmother, a most virtuous princess, sister to the late Nawab, was still alive. Her memory of Bun-avatâr-sahib was still so green that doubtless she would be able to tell the Begum-sahiba many things of which a mere mean slave could not be cognizant. And this most virtuous, most interesting one, had long been anxious to return a visit which the Begum-sahiba had graciously paid her, in company with a missen-miss--
"What! That funny old fat woman!" interrupted Laila, with a laugh. "That dirty old thing? I remember, she did claim to be a relation of the Nawab's. And when I asked her why she wore such dirty clothes she was angry, and said she had beautiful ones all tied up in bundles! I don't believe she had, though--"
"The dress the Begum-sahiba wore last night is one of them," interrupted Akbar, quietly; "it belonged to Anâri Begum, Huzoor, and there are plenty more like it. And all are really the Huzoor's; no one else's." Laila looked down on the trays with a new interest. "Did it really belong to--to her?" she asked; "and the jewels also?"
"The jewels also. There are plenty of them. And if Anâri Begum was really the Begum-sahiba's grandmother, then the jewels are hers by right."