Zarah spoke well, her melodious, deep voice filling the room, the jewels sparkling on her hands as she moved them in graceful, dramatic gesture. She recounted humorous incident, and laughed; tragic, and drew her hand across her dry eyes; she was hypocrisy incarnate as she revelled in the cunningly thought-out revenge she had decided to take upon her prisoner.
“A wonder-r place, is it not, Helena? Unique in ze wor-r-ld. You do wr-r-ong in not sending ze invitation to our-r fr-r-ien’. I would zank him for-r saving me fr-r-om death in my schooldays. But if you will not, you will not, and as you will not, zen must I give you a bodyguar-r-d to keep you safe until I take you back to him?”
“I don’t want a bodyguard, Zarah. As long as I have your permission to run about all over the place....”
“But zat is it, ze place is ver-r-y big an’ full of danger-r-ous places.” Zarah had no intention of letting the girl make friends with any of her people, and rose as she spoke and crossed to the door. “I will ask Al-Asad to r-r-recommend someone to look after you, to chaper-r-ron you, as you say.”
Al-Asad got to his feet when his mistress called him.
“I have them in my hand,” she said, so quietly that Namlah strained her ears in vain. “We will descend and speak upon it, but I will not that she makes friends amongst my people; find thou, therefore, someone to be ever upon her heels.”
“Nay, woman, leave her free so that we find out the workings of her mind through her actions and through the tongues of those with whom she speaks. Warn her body-woman, even the ever-busy Namlah, that her life depends upon the life of the white woman and——”
Helen, who had been watching the magnificent couple, wondered what the sudden, heavy frown on Zarah’s face portended, and instinctively moved back when she swept into the room.
“Where-r-re is your-r ser-r-vant?” she asked abruptly. “Why is she not attending you? Wher-r-e does zis Namlah hide her-r-self, zat woman with a face like a gr-r-avel path?”
Helen smiled up at the Arabian and drew her hand across her hair, pushing it back as a sign to the pock-marked woman who stood, quaking with fear and with hands clasped in the doorway of the recess, to hide herself.