“Now Allah heal thee! It is plain she has bewitched thee too. She is for all men, like the rest of her foul race—for strangers, servants, donkey-drivers, even scavengers! Pray, pray to God till I bestow on thee a charm of power!”
“Hush! Let him speak! Let Ghandûr tell his story!” cried a second voice. Ghandûr became aware of other ladies pressing to the screen. He lifted up his voice and wept.
“O lady, speak no bitterness against her. She lies this moment at the point of death. Our house is as a tomb, a haunt of ominous owls. My lord the Pasha frowns and looks distressful; my lord Yûsuf weeps as if his heart would break. I myself have been to call a Frankish doctor, who, on reading my lord’s message, rode off like the wind. Allah knows the dear one may be dead this minute!”
He buried his face in his hands, while a hubbub of concern arose behind the screen.
“O poor darling floweret! O despair!” wailed Yûsuf’s mother, all her feelings turned right round. “What is her illness? Quick, describe! May Allah heal her!”
“Fever—the worst sort!”
“I go at once to her.”
A sick-nurse of experience in charms and nostrums, the lady Fitnah always quickened to the scent of illness and adored the sufferer. From a creature hardly to be named by modest lips, the wife of Yûsuf was become the apple of her eye Having sent an order for the carriage, she went through her store of medicines, discoursing wisely to the other ladies; while Ghandûr, retiring, heard from the attendant eunuch:
“Thou hast done it! We had word of this; Sawwâb was summoned. But the command was, not to tell the ladies.”