She swept on through the building, casting aside the cumbersome sari as if its purpose of concealment were at an end. The few lamps which lit the inner rooms were scattered and dim, but Mowbray could see that his first impression as to the magnificence of her garments was not a mistaken one. She had yielded so far to convention, being a widow, as to wear a purple dress, but the bodice of white silk was fringed with silver, an exquisite shawl draped her shoulders in diaphanous folds, diamonds gleamed in her hair, and her rapid movements showed that her silk stockings were shot with silver. A strange garb, truly, for one who, according to Jai Singh, lived on a pittance of one rupee a day, and even more noteworthy when the manner and hour of her visit to Dilkusha were taken into account.
When she entered the Peacock Room she found Fra Pietro kneeling, with his face sunk in his hands, near to the charpoy, or roughly contrived bedstead, which, like all Europeans, he preferred to the cushions of the East. Walter had quitted the room by another door, so the worthy Franciscan’s spellbound look, when he raised his eyes to learn who it was who came from the interior of the house and saw the radiant figure of Nur Mahal, would surely, under other circumstances, have brought a laugh to Walter’s lips.
The friar, wishing to read some portion of the daily “office,” had obtained four lamps and trimmed them with some care. Comparatively speaking, there was a flood of light at his end of the spacious chamber, and the obscurity reigning in the further part only added to the bewildering effect of the sylph-like being who, after advancing a little way, stood and gazed at him irresolutely.
But Mowbray’s firm tread broke the spell against which Fra Pietro was already fortifying himself by fervent ejaculations. A prophet surprised by the fulfilment of his own prophecy, he rose to his feet, and bowed with the ready politeness of his race.
“Princess,” he said, speaking Urdu, with slow precision, “I greet you! None but you can resolve our perplexities. You are, indeed, well come!”
The aspect of the friar, with the shaven crown, untrimmed beard, coarse brown robe and hood, white cords and rough sandals of St. Francis d’Assisi, was no less astounding to Nur Mahal than was her regal semblance to him. In her eyes he was on a parity with the fakirs, the mullahs, the religious mendicants of her adopted country. The few Europeans she had seen were soldiers, merchants, or dignified ecclesiastics of the Jesuit order, but here was one whose poverty-stricken appearance might well have prejudiced her against him. Like the Apostle whose name he bore, Fra Pietro had said: “Lo, we have left all, and followed Thee.” Of such renunciatory gospel Nur Mahal had no cognizance.
Nevertheless, such was the depth of this girl-widow’s sagacity, that she caught instantly from the Franciscan’s benign features some glimpse of his exalted character. She half turned to Walter with her enchanting smile:—
“I had forgotten the presence of your friend. This, doubtless, is the priest of whom I have heard, and for whose sake you dared do more than for mine.”
“I owed him my life, and more, for he saved me from unimagined horrors. Nor is the debt yet paid in full,” was the reply.
“Can I speak openly before him?”