“Why do you not get up?” asked Zeemit, in a tone that contrasted strangely with the savageness and cruelty of Wanna.
The ray brightened again for Flora. She caught comfort from that voice; but when she looked into the face she saw nothing to justify the inference she had drawn. The kindliness displayed in Zeemit’s voice did not escape Wanna, who turned sharply upon her country-woman and cried—
“How is this? You speak to the white-faced cat as if she were your pet dove, instead of an enemy.”
“Scarcely an enemy, Wanna. Her only crime seems to be that she is a Feringhee.”
“She is a beast.”
“She is a woman, and I feel as a woman should do for her.”
Zeemit’s words were to Flora like water to the parched earth. They gave her hope, they gave her joy; she drank them in with avidity, and gained strength. She rose up and would have clung around the neck of her ayah, had not the attitude of Wanna appalled her.
The hag stood facing Zeemit. The bangles on her legs and arms chinked as she shook with passion. She was clawing the air, and almost foaming at the mouth. She struggled to speak, but her passion well-nigh choked her. Words came at last.
“You sympathise with this Feringhee woman. I see through you—you are an enemy to us, a friend to her. But, if you thought to liberate her, you have set up a trap into which you yourself have blindly walked. I go for Jewan.”
She made a movement towards the door. To let her go would frustrate every plan. Zeemit knew that it was no time for reflection. It was woman to woman—age to age; for on both the years pressed heavily. With a lithe and agile spring she fastened upon Wanna, who, with the sudden instinct of self-preservation and the ferocity of the jungle cat, twisted her bony fingers round and dug her nails deep into the flesh of the other’s arms.