"At the price of six Toorkoman horses, perhaps," was the half-angry response; "while to me you are priceless, beyond life itself. Denounce me to Ackbar Khan—would you?"
"Yes."
His teeth glistened under his jet moustache as he replied—
"Those stones and trees alone hear us; so now let me tell you, Kaffir girl, that you weary me; by the five blessed Keys of Knowledge, you do!" and, as he spoke, he started to his feet, and by an angry twist of his embroidered girdle threw his jewelled sabre behind him.
"Oh, this is becoming frightful!" moaned Mabel, clasping her hands and looking wildly round her; "what will become of me now? Papa, Rose, are we never to meet again?"
Oh, if big, burly Bob Waller, with his six feet and odd inches of stature, were only there! Could he but know of her misery of mind—her dire extremity! but would he ever know? God alone could tell!
There is much that is touching in the helplessness of any woman, but more than all a beautiful one, though we, whose lines are cast in pleasant places, and in a land of well-organized police, may seldom see it—a clinging, imploring expression of eye, when all is soul and depth of heart, and strength avails not. But Zohrab Zubberdust felt nothing of this. She on whom he looked might be pure as Diana, "chaste as Eve on the morning of her innocence," yet, as a Mohammedan, he had a secret contempt for her—perhaps a doubt of her—as a Kaffir woman. He was only inspired by the emotions of triumph and passion, by the sure conviction that this fair Feringhee, this daughter of a vanquished tribe, this outcast unbeliever, so lovely in her whiteness of skin, her purity of complexion, and wondrous colour of hair, in her roundness of limb, and in stature so far surpassing all the maids of the twenty-one Afghan clans or races, was his—his property—to become the slave of his will or his cruelty, as it pleased him!
Of the paradox that woman's weakness is her strength, with the Christian man, Zohrab knew nothing, and felt less; yet he tried to act the lover in a melodramatic fashion, by making high-flown speeches, and assuring her, again and again, that he loved her "as the only Prophet of God loved Ayesha, his favourite wife, the mother of all the Faithful," and much more to the same purpose, till amid the wind that sighed through the trees, and shook the wild tulips and lilies by the lake, the quickened ear of Mabel caught a distant sound; and then one of those shrill cries of despair, that women alone can give, escaped her.
A fierce malediction from the lips of Zohrab mingled with it, for he dreaded Saleh Mohammed; and in a few moments more the clink of hoofs was heard; then Zohrab sternly drew a pistol from his girdle, and unsheathed his sabre like a flash of fire in the moonlight. The blade glittered like his own eyes, as he glared alternately from Mabel to where the sounds came; and by his keen, wild expression and fierce quivering nostrils, she saw with terror, that a very slight matter might turn his wrath and his weapons against herself.
"Here comes aid—Saleh Mohammed perhaps! Help, help, in the name of God!" she cried, recklessly.