“O sorrowful day! O fears that beset my heart! I who have never seen any man save my auspicious father and brothers and the old grey-beard, the Pundit Ram Lal,—what a fate is this! What do I know of men? How shall I learn? O, my misery!”—and she sat herself beneath the shade of a great chinar tree, and became inconsolable, weeping bitterly, and her women wept with her.
So passed an hour, and at last her confidante, Lailela, a girl from Bokhara, having dried her eyes began to look about her, and she saw that with the written command of the King had come a small object folded in rose silk and bound with threads of gold, and with the insatiable curiosity of a woman she said to the weeping Princess:
“Great Lady, here is a something—I do not know what, but I guess it to be a bridal gift from his Majesty.” And the Princess took it in her hands and her ladies gathered about her as stars surround the moon, and with her slender fingers and nails like little pearls she unthreaded the knots of gold and the inner treasure was disclosed, and it was a frame of gold filagreed and set with rubies and diamond sparks, and within it the portrait of a young man, and written on the back of it: “The King of Jamu.” The artist, whose skill resembled that of the Creator, had depicted him seated on his throne of ivory inlaid with gold, and in his turban blazed that great jewel known as the Sea of Splendour, but these did not for one moment detain the eye, for he was himself the jewel of Kings, young, noble, dark of hair and eyes, with amorous lips, proud yet gentle, and a throat like the column that upholds the world, and limbs shaped for height and strength and speed. And surely had he been a water-carrier, men had said, “This is the son of a King.”
And as the Princess Amra looked she sighed and changed colour, and the last tear fell from her long lashes upon the portrait, and she dried it with her gold-bordered veil, and looked and sighed again, and lost in thought she fell into a deep silence.
And Lailela said with sympathy:
“Surely a terrible doom, O Princess! Now had the King been an old man, kind and paternal, it would but have been passing from the arms of one father to another. But a young man— O, there is much to fear, and who shall sound the deeps of their hearts?”
And the Princess slowly shook her head, not knowing what she did, still gazing at the portrait, and Lailela continued:
“Little do we all know men. But I have been told it is safer to adventure in a jungle of tigers than to take a husband knowing nothing of their wiles and tyrannies, and it is now my counsel that we should all declare before the Princess any small knowledge that has reached us, that she may not go forth utterly unarmed.”
And all the ladies looked doubtfully at one another, and the Princess smiled faintly as a moon in clouds, and said:
“Sisters, it is my command that you do as Lailela has said, for her counsel is good, and she herself shall begin, for I perceive there is knowledge behind her lips. Let all now prepare to listen, for we speak of love.”