Jehân Aziz turned on her like a snake, sleepy yet swift, ready for dreams or death.
'If thou dost dare to tell----'
She held out her bare brown arm in a quick gesture of silence, and rising, swept him a salaam that set the hidden anklets beneath her dirty draperies a-jingling, and proclaimed her what she was--a passed mistress in the oldest of professions for women.
'There is no need, my lord, she said superbly, 'to teach Dilarâm her duty to the virtuous women who sit free of shame in the noble houses where she dances. We learn that first of all.'
There was an indescribable grace in her attitude, a cadence in her utterance, which proved her claim. She was of the old school, educated to her craft.
The jingle of anklets brought a man's face to a neighbouring balcony. A face hollow-cheeked, haggard, with dissipation written on it. Brought thither by curiosity, it remained in approval of the studiously-posed figure in the creased shawl. Jehân's face, too, showed a like attraction, and Burkut Ali, the nail-paring over, lounged up with a savage sort of discontent at his own inward admiration--a regret, as it were, for the vices of his ancestors. As a rule, Dilarâm and her dancing did not amuse him in the very least. He had passed from the old style to the new, and, indeed, was chiefly responsible for the introduction of Miss Leezie and her like to the nobility and gentry of Nushapore. But now he was conscious that this, in its way, was better; and the fact formed a fresh item in his general grievance against those who, having taken the reins of government from such as he, had driven India into change--even in its wickedness!
The secret cherishing of this general grievance of his own in the minds of others was Burkut Ali's whole occupation in life. The dilatory disaffection of his neighbours, a disaffection inevitable in a society which this change had literally ruined, could, he had discovered, be turned to his own profit in two ways. First, because, as confidant to seditious utterances, he gained a hold on the utterer; secondly, because, as the repeater of them to persons in high places, he gained a hold on the hearer. For the rest his manners were perfection, his Persian a pure pleasure to the ear. And both these were at their best when--his present part in the farce of vague conspirings being that of general backer-up of Jehân's spasmodic belief in his own claims to royalty--he paused before the heir in the most elaborately courtly fashion and began mellifluously--
'Hath it, perchance, found place in the memory of the Most High that this, being the death-day of the sainted lady ancestress Hâfiz Begum, the dirge for her soul will be intoned by the appointed canons at the family mausoleum? And as this will be the last time----'
'The last time?' echoed Jehân haughtily, 'how so?'
The man's face in the balcony sharpened with sudden interest. Between his dissipations he was editor of the vilest broadsheet in the town, a broadsheet which existed simply by virtue of its unfailing basis of firm falsehoods.