“Wilt thou O my guest of whom I crave pardon for the insult put upon thee by my child,” said the Sheikh at last, “wilt thou take her now, bereft of all dignity, as wife, to serve their Excellencies thy wives as handmaiden until the stain upon her honour and my honour be wiped out?”
There was no doubt as in what direction the tiger-daughter would literally spring.
She sprang straight forward, eyes blazing, face distorted with rage, looking from one man to the other and back as, without waiting to see how the Emeer would take the suggestion, she flung a proverb of protest at him.
“Nay! Nay! Nay!” she screamed. “‘My meat and his meat cannot be cooked in the same pot!’”
“Peace, daughter!” said the Sheikh sharply, “lest I drive thee myself out into the desert to die. All that is mine is my guest’s, my bread, my horses, my wealth and thou, if he will deign to look upon thee.”
He spoke with the Oriental’s habitual extravagance of speech, but, under the agony of the blow dealt his pride by his daughter, with the firm intention of giving all he possessed to the insulted man if by so doing he could obliterate the stain upon his own name. “Wilt have her, with jewels and horses and cattle and slaves, O my guest?”
The Emeer slowly shook his shaven turbaned head.
The offer was tempting indeed, but the brief insight into the girl’s character, allied to the memory of the warring factions already established in his house, had decided him.
He was getting on in years, with a liking for peace, good food and long hours of sleep; his line was firmly established, his fortune big enough to buy or hire maidens for the song or the dance.