Born and bred in the heat of the tropics, which hastens the physical development of both sexes in the Eastern races, she was almost full grown upon her twelfth birthday. She inherited the beauty of her mother, save for the colour of her hair, which rioted over her head in short curls and flamed like the setting sun, and the colour of her eyes, which shone like a topaz in the moonlight or as the storm-whipped desert, according to the violence or moderation of her mood. Through the Andalusian strain in her mixed blood she had come by her perfect hands and feet and teeth, and to the same source was she a thousand times indebted for the grace of her movements and gait and the assurance of her pose.
Her father’s tenacity was abnormally developed in her. It had helped him to cling to life in the first turbulent years in the desolate Sanctuary; it helped her to beat down his almost indomitable will over matters both great and small, until, save for an occasional outburst of authority, he was as wax in her slender hands. Of his great-heartedness, his charity towards the needy—for whom he so often robbed the wealthy, with much violence and bloodshed—his justice and understanding, she had not one particle in her heart of stone, as she had not a glimmer of the humour and tenderness which had served to balance her mother’s arrogance and passionate nature.
In her, the crossing of the races, exaggerating the defects, minimizing the merits of her parentage, had resulted in a terrible streak of cruelty which roused a fierce hatred in heart of man and beast.
Virile, ambitious, relentless, she was cursed from birth by the strength of her dual nationality.
Driven, beaten, horses did her bidding, but had never been known to answer to her call; dogs hated her instinctively, but feared her not one bit; her arm still showed, would always show, the marks of Rādi’s teeth when, from an incredible distance, the greyhound bitch leapt upon her to revenge the death, by drowning, of one pup which had angered the girl by its continual whimpering. For her life she dared not visit the kennels unattended.
She had tried, but had failed to bring about the fall of Yussuf of the Wondrous Eyes, who loved the Sheikh as a brother, and would have laid down his life for him if he had so desired.
She hated him for his beauty, for his indifference towards her, for the love he inspired in animals—Rādi, the famous greyhound; Lulah, the fastest mare; Fahm, the priceless dromedary, were all his.
Allah! how she hated him!
He responded to her hate with a hate transcending that of his own dog, the maddened bitch; he had hated her blindly from the very beginning—for causing the death of the woman who had brought such happiness to his friend; for usurping her place and his place in the Sheikh’s heart; for her cruelty, her tyranny, her utter disregard of the happiness and welfare of others.
He set himself to thwart the child in every possible way and upon every possible occasion—craftily, so that none should point to him as the author of the contretemps which so strangely and so frequently befell her.