“How sayest thou, little cat?” Zarah turned lazily on her side as she spoke to the lion cub. “Wouldst bring a mate to thy love because she would have none of thee, or wouldst break her will or her neck so as to prove thyself her master?”
Namlah gasped and Asad leant quickly forward when, with a low growl of pleasure, the great cat sprang upon the divan and stood across its mistress, kneading the silken cover into strips.
“Learn thy lesson from the four-footed beast,” cried Zarah sharply, as she struck the animal across the eyes with the whip until it leapt from the divan and slunk across the room, where it crouched in a corner with lashing tail and blazing eyes. “The lesson which teaches the slave that there is a line beyond which his foot may not go.”
But Al-Asad was taking no notice of the lesson he was being taught. From under half-closed lids he was watching something round outside the window which, to the best of his knowledge, had not been there when he had sat down upon the floor, something which he mistook for Yussuf’s head, knowing the hatred which existed between him and his mistress.
“Let us cease this foolish talk,” he repeated as he rose slowly to his feet, his heart hot with anger at the thought of the spy. “Let us instead”—he lowered his voice to the merest whisper as he spoke—“let us visit the woman who is to be the bait in the trap into which the white man will place his feet.”
He was at the door with one mighty bound, and out to the wall which showed bare in the starlight. He stood listening for the faintest sound.
None came.
Namlah lay flat on her face upon the steps, her dusky slip of a body and saffron-coloured qamis one with the shadows.
But she was making noise enough with her beloved brass pots to disturb the invalid or to waken the dead as her dreaded mistress, followed by the gigantic half-caste, entered the room in which the prisoner lay, looking out towards the desert where she had lost those she loved so dearly.