“If you kill him,” Lucilla interrupted quickly, and the Raja saw her bosom rise and fall, a faint color tinge her cheeks, a look of life creep into her face. He had stirred her at last! “If you cut short his work—you’ll kill millions of your own race, whom he would have saved.”
The Raja smiled—a little at her new eagerness, though it stung him—more at what she had said. “I don’t know that I care very much about the millions you speak of,” he answered quietly—more intent in watching her, and in trying to cut some breach in her seeming composure, than in the words he used. “Life is a weed that grows again as fast as death mows it down. At all events, he is an Englishman, a Feringhi—and, may I add, without indiscretion, that the interest you take in him—” the woman stiffened, and blanched again, and Rukh saw a vein swell and beat in her throat—“oh, the merest friendly interest, I am sure—does not endear him to me. One is, after all, a man, and the favor shown to another man by a beautiful woman—”
Without glancing at him, Mrs. Crespin rose slowly, and moved calmly towards the room where the ivory balls still clicked; but there was blood oozed under her wedding-ring.
But the Raja rose swiftly, and faced her, standing between her and it before she reached the billiard-room door.
“Please, please, Mrs. Crespin,” he said entreatingly, and his eyes grew suddenly soft, “bear with me if I transgress your Western conventions. Can I help being an Oriental?” he asked with a slight, proud smile. “Believe me, I mean no harm; I wanted to talk to you about—” He broke off lamely, as if not knowing how to go on.
“Well?” she said imperiously, after a moment, a goad in her quiet tone, a taunt in her stern, angry eyes.
“You spoke last night,” Rukh said very gently, “of—your children—”
She turned away swiftly, her self-control was wavering at last. He had hit the woman below the belt! The bad blow had crumpled her. She turned away, and she swayed a little as she moved.
“I think you said—a boy and a girl,” the despot pushed his advantage home.
It was too much.