He interrupted her mockingly. 'I must learn to take my pleasure elsewhere, noble aunt; 'twill be an easier task than finding it here.' So, with an insolent stare at his wife, he strutted out jauntily.
'Didst hear?' quavered Aunt Khôjee. Khâdeeja Khânum's answering whimper was almost a howl; but Noormahal said nothing. She was thinking of her tormentor's words about the child. Was it true that the price of the ring might save her darling?
For the present, however, the ring itself satisfied him. Appeased even from sobs, he was engrossed in finding out which of his tiny fingers went nearest to filling up its gold circlet. As he did so the green gleam of the emerald shone broadly, unbrokenly; for, as Mr. Lucanaster had often told his Paris principals, the legend scratched on it was so faint that a turn of the wheel would obliterate it. Yet there it was as yet.
'Fuzl-Ilahi, Panah-i-deen.'
Which, being translated, is, 'By the Grace of God Defender of the Faith.'
Words which have caused much shedding of blood and tears.
But Sobrai Begum found laughter in the storm they had provoked.
''Twas only Jehân and Noormahal squabbling over the old ring,' she tittered over the wall in answer to a query. 'In the end, she gave him the last of the pearls to pacify him. I would have used them to better purpose had I had the luck to have my hand on them!' And as she sullenly obeyed Aunt Khôjee's call to help, she told herself that two or three even of the pearls would have brought her freedom; would have given her, as Uncle Lateef had expressed it, that some one to hold the string of her kite, without which aid independence was impossible. For Sobrai had no mind for the gutter.
So the pearls, if she had them----
She gave a little gasp; in folding up the state carpet, four milk-white beads rolled out from its worn strings.