With a mighty effort Zarah played for her position as future ruler of the two servants, and won.
“Bring me first my body-women—here—at once!”
The two slaves stood like graven images for an infinitesimal fraction of a second, whilst she looked them full in the eyes, then they bowed to the very ground before her and departed—to do her bidding.
CHAPTER III
“Suspicious, treacherous, remote from good works.”—Arabic Proverb.
Neither storms of tears nor threats of suicide having proved potent enough to alter the Sheikh’s decision, Zarah, with as good a grace as she could muster, had acknowledged a temporary defeat and resigned herself to a visit of two years’ duration to the well-known school for young European ladies over the age of fifteen in Cairo.
The school, exclusive, expensive, was looked upon more as a home from home, where distracted mothers could deposit the offspring they had not had the sense to leave behind in cooler climes; as an establishment where angles could be rounded and manners polished rather than a seminary where such dull things as grammar and arithmetic could be learned.
The Misses Cruikshanks had spent the hours they should have passed in the siesta in threshing out the question of introducing a pupil of mixed parentage into the society of the pure-bred, if somewhat insipid, young women entrusted to their charge.