"Paugh!" sneered the woman. "It is time that you sold me out to another after that speech."
The tears shot into her eyes, but they were quickly dried by her hot rage; and as quickly again the livid fury gave place to a forced smile.
"I warn you, my lord, that I myself will be the judge of my new purchaser, as I was of you."
This woman was well aware that anger did not become her type of countenance; it changed her beauty into hideousness. Whatever age-marks were latent in her face, smoothed by practised smiles, or masked by cosmetics, were brought out by ill temper—as sunburn develops freckles. She was as self-conscious when gazed at by others as when she was alone before her mirror, and as ready with her arts. She, therefore, instantly suppressed the rising displeasure.
Indeed, the displeasure would itself have died as Apollonius further disclosed his schemes; for any fondness she may have felt for the present owner of her affections was less than her innate cupidity, and less than that passion for intrigue and adventure which she had developed by much practice on many fields. In her, deceitfulness reached the rank which in men is called diplomacy. Though now at home in the tent of the Syrian commander, she was not unwilling to enlarge the sphere of her conquest in any direction. Perhaps her eagerness for the spoil of such a house as that of Glaucon was as laudable, certainly as natural, as Apollonius' own ambition to fame himself as the conqueror of Palestine.
The conversation of the General and the woman was interrupted by a lad, whose basket of fruit, deftly balanced on his head, had gained him admission to the camp; for while strict guard was kept against the intrusion of peasant men and women, the children were allowed freedom to sell their delicacies for the coins, though often they received only the cuffs, of the soldiers.
The boy was stretched at full length upon the ground, counting the bits of money he had taken, and sorting the figs, dates, and grapes which were left in his basket. His head was covered with a mass of unkempt black hair, his body with a single garment, which might have been an inverted corn sack, tied with a string at the waist, while his head protruded through a hole in the bottom. His legs and feet were bare except for the dirt which hosed them, and striped with scratches made by bramble bushes.
So engrossed was the boy in his business calculations that he did not seem aware of his undue proximity to the General's tent, until a sentinel prodded him in the calf of the leg with his spear-point, and bade him "Begone!"