“I am glad of it,” said Jewan. “My prize will be safely kept now. Guard her well, Zeemit; and you, Wanna, if you value your life, look to her! You understand? She has dared to defy me, and I swear to subdue her!”
He crossed the room to where Flora still trembled, and crouched upon the floor. He stooped over, and said, with bitterness—
“I leave you now. Business calls me hence, but I shall return to-night, and then we will see who conquers.”
He passed out of the room, and Wanna locked the door after him. It was an inexpressible relief to Flora when he had gone. But when she raised her head, and her eyes fell upon Wanna’s face, she shuddered. It was a face scarcely human in its expression of hate. She turned to Zeemit—she had given her hope in Meerut—why had she failed her now? She could read little or nothing in the dusky features. Her heart sank, for the glimmering ray that had supported her hitherto seemed to fade entirely.
“Come,” said Wanna, spurning the trembling girl with her foot, “here is food for you; I suppose I must keep life in you until Jewan has sucked your sweetness. What he can see in you I know not. It is a mad infatuation, and he will get the better of it; but if I had my way I would torture you. I would spoil your beauty—I would pluck your eyes out—I would lop off a limb from your body every day—I would burn you with hot irons. Ah, ah, ah! it would be sport! Eh, Zeemit, what say you? We have been ground as corn in a mill by these accursed Feringhees; and now that our day has come, have we not a right to be glad?”
She hummed the air of an Indian ditty, and fairly danced about the room with fiendish glee.
“Oh, woman!” moaned the unhappy Flora, “if you are not altogether inhuman, have pity, and kill me.”
“Ugh, bah, pish! pity indeed,” cried Wanna, moving about backwards and forwards in that restless and strange manner peculiar to caged, wild animals. “Have we ever had pity from your countrymen? Have you not crushed us into the earth?—subdued us with fire and sword? And now that our power is coming back we know well how to retaliate.”
As she spoke she spat upon the floor twice, and made a sort of hissing sound with her lips.[5]