In the center of the room stood Nur Mahal, her normally lily-white face with its peachlike bloom wholly devoid of color, and her wondrous eyes gazing fixedly at the tall figure of the Emperor, who hesitated an instant when Mowbray motioned him to enter first. Walter’s pulse galloped somewhat during that pause. He did not know then that while men were dying in hundreds around the gate and elsewhere, the Franciscan had won a wordy victory behind the locked doors. No sooner were the Countess’s senses restored than Fra Pietro engaged the Persian Princess in a discourse which quickly revealed that here were well-matched dialecticians. Pride, keen intellect, consciousness of physical charm and mental power, were confronted by gentle insistence on the eternal verities which govern mankind, irrespective of race or climate.
Neither palliating nor excusing Jahangir’s excesses, the friar did not hesitate to hold a mirror to the girl’s own faults. If she had loved the prince why did she profess to hate the king? If the death of her husband so rankled in her memory that the Emperor, who was indirectly responsible for it, was not to be forgiven, why had she gone back to Agra, instead of pursuing her peaceful voyage to Burdwán? Ah, yes, he appreciated her belief that other eventualities might happen, but life was constituted of shattered hopes, and the one eternal, wholly satisfying ideal was to so order one’s actions that when called to final account one could truly say: “This I did and thus I spoke because it seemed to me best for the happiness and well-being of my fellow-creatures.”
To and fro flew the shuttlecock of their argument, until Nur Mahal, astonished and not a little humiliated by the singular knowledge of her inmost feelings displayed by this mild-eyed man of low estate, paced the long room like a caged gazelle, and the Countess di Cabota, half distracted by the distant sounds of murderous conflict, nevertheless found time to wonder what Fra Pietro was saying which made the beautiful Persian so angry.
The sound of Mowbray’s voice, the sight of Jahangir in his company unattended, drove the passion from her face. Her red lips were slightly opened in mute inquiry, her fingers were entwined irresolutely, her whole attitude, so heedless was she of the restraint that cloaks the secret thought, indicated a passive desire to let chance carry her which way it willed.
But the glory of her loveliness was never more manifest than in this feminine mood, and Jahangir, a man of impulse, was drawn to her as steel to a magnet.
“You and I,” said he, slowly, “have much to forget, but you alone have a great deal to forgive. Nevertheless, on a night when I have won my kingdom I may well be pardoned if I hope to win my queen.”
With that, he unfastened the samite over-cloak he wore, and took from his neck a string of priceless pearls. Nur Mahal bent her proud head, and the Emperor, with a laugh of almost boyish glee, adjusted the shimmering ornament around her throat.
She said something in a low tone, and it was a long time before she looked up again. When her eyes first encountered Mowbray’s they were bright with repressed tears.
Notwithstanding these tender passages, and some amusingly one-sided episodes in the garden between Roger and the Countess, for the lady made him kneel down whilst she washed his face, there was little time for love-making. Jahangir, having joyously informed the nearest members of his entourage that Nur Mahal was to be treated as the Empress which she would be created next day in durbar, began to question Mowbray as to the events of the night. Walter’s task was rendered more simple by the projected marriage of one whom he suspected to be the real instigator of the whole affair. He must perforce twist the narrative to show the prospective Sultana in the best light, and herein, as it happened, a casual reference to Dom Geronimo was helpful.