Bowlegs would have spat in derision if he had dared.
“A mouse in the Lion’s maw, brother. I lay thee my shirt of silk to thy sandals that the Lion would break him in——”
The whispering stopped when Ralph Trenchard raised his hand, whilst the Patriarch, by force of habit, searched for the counters in the folds of his new raiment.
“The honour you do me is very great, very great. I cannot find words to thank you. But——” Ralph Trenchard looked down at Zarah, who rose slowly, a lovely glittering thing full of apprehension and a rising anger. She looked him straight in the eyes without a word, and at the relentlessness which shone in hers he subconsciously wondered what kind of death by torture she would mete out to him in return for his loyalty to Helen.
“But——?”
The word dropped from her lips like the first thunder drop heralding the coming storm, and Helen, a great light blazing in her eyes, stepped forward and stopped as Yussuf held her back by a movement of his hand.
“But,” continued Ralph Trenchard slowly, very slowly, so that every word could be clearly heard throughout the hall, “the honour, the great honour I must refuse, because——”
“Because——?”
Under the impulse of a great excitement the men moved forward in a body, then stopped.
There was not a sound to break the terrible silence, not a movement except for the jewels which flashed as they rose and fell above the Arabian girl’s heart and the fans which swung the silver lamps and stirred the black and orange osprey of her head-dress.