“Assuredly. We must settle with Edwards, else I would take the river to Calcutta.”
“Ecod! From the manner in which you gazed at that hoity-toity lass in yellow silk I thought you were minded to dally in Agra.”
For some subtle reason the remark nettled Mowbray.
“We have already met two who are willing to come to blows about her,” said he, tartly, “but I fail to see why you should hold me capable of the folly of making a third.”
“Nay, nay,” said Sainton, with irritating composure. “I credit thee with wisdom beyond thy years, but if Solomon, who had three thousand wives, could go daft about yet an extra woman, there is small cause why thou, who hast no wife at all, shouldst not be bitten by the craze. I warrant you Prince Jahangir hath a bevy of beauties in his private abode, and this chuck who hangs his head so dolefully may have half a score or more waiting his beck and nod at home, yet they both are keen to fall to with sword and dagger to dispute the possession of the quean we have just quitted. ‘Garden of Heart’s Delight,’ i’ faith! The flower they all seek there is of a kind that stings in the plucking.”
Mowbray, conscious that the dethronement of Nellie Roe in his mind was but momentary, regained his normal good humor.
“You are in a mood for preaching this morning,” he cried. “Now, had your tongue run so smoothly when the Sultana was present, you might have won her favor, as all the women have an eye for you, Roger.”
“A murrain on the barbarous words that trip my speech! I could talk to her Majesty in honest Yorkshire, and I can make some headway in the language of the common folk hereabout, but when it comes to your pretty poesy of Shiraz I am perforce dumb as a Whitby mussel.”
Here, Sher Afghán, rousing himself from a mournful reverie, began to hum a verse of a well-known Persian love song:—
“O love! for you I could die;
’Tis death from your presence to fly;
O love! will the pain never end?
Will our hearts ne’er in unison blend?”