Miss Morgan was looking strangely puzzled. She was thinking.
“I cannot understand,” she said, at last. “What can it possibly mean, Beebee? And how could Shireen have come here?”
“You cannot understand,” cried Beebee gladly. “Oh, but I do. They tell us love is blind. It is false. For I can see; I can see it all. My prince is near at hand, and soon he will come. He is, indeed, he must be in that very ship that passed on up the river to Bagdad.”
Miss Morgan’s eyes now began to gladden with joy.
“What you say must be true,” she said. “And deliverance is at hand. We have but to wait.”
I felt happier now than ever I had done in my life before. Night fell soon; and I retired with my dear mistress into the luxuriously-furnished apartment, just as slaves began to light the lamps.
They took no notice of the strange pussy.
By-and-bye, the tall, black, fierce-eyed eunuch himself came in, with boys bearing refreshments. But even he did not know me. He had not Beebee’s eyes of love.
Beebee talked to him to-night pleasantly too. She even teased him a little, as she used to do when more of a child.
He looked pleased, happy even. He seemed to love his mistress; and yet, this man, at the bidding of his master, Beebee’s father, would have thrust her shrieking into a sack, and cast her into the Tigris, whose dark waters close, every month, over many a lovely female form, doomed to death by their heartless husbands.