"Read this," he said; "it is from Osman Beg; and I would that these his emissaries heard thy decision from thine own lips. Open the letter and read it to me."
The epistle was from Osman Beg himself, whose orthography and spelling were none of the best. He had evidently not trusted his moonshee to copy it. It contained all that Máma Luteefa and Shireen had enumerated, and much more in a fulsome style of flattery; and he would come to Korikul, with his body servants only, to celebrate the marriage at any time, or by any person, that might be approved of.
It was as much as she could do to read the letter. Zóra's face flushed, and her eyes glowed at the remembrance of the insult and indignity which had been put upon her; and when she had read it and put it down, she burst into a violent flood of tears. "He might have spared thee this last indignity, Abba," she sobbed, "knowing, as he does, that we have been obliged to fly from his tyranny and become wanderers. And these women, who failed to persuade me once when I was in their power, might have guessed what the result of their mission would be when I was free. Yet you are not to blame, Máma Luteefa. You were following your trade, and he was giving you gold. He has even bribed you again. Enough that you think it honourable and good. Now hear the last words I will speak to either of you. Go! tell your master that I am now, even as I was then. No wealth can tempt me, no threat can terrify me; I go whither he cannot find me, and am henceforth a Fakeer with my grandfather, whose lot I share, whatever it may be, till he passes away. Go! and trouble us no more."
"And that is your answer, Zóra-bee?" said Máma Luteefa, somewhat scornfully. "You refuse, child, all that I had contrived for you."
"I have spoken," returned the girl; and she sat still, idly picking up pebbles from the sand.
"And how didst thou cross the river, Mámajee?" asked Runga, in his rough Dekhan dialect.
"What business is that of yours?" said Shireen-bee. "My mistress does not speak with Beydurs."
"Perhaps she would speak; perhaps she would be made to speak if I had her head shaved and she were set on an ass. I am master here, and can do justice after my own rough fashion. Will ye answer the question?"
If it had not been painful to witness, the terror of the two women would have been ludicrous. They looked hither and thither without seeing the possibility of aid, and at last fell down before the old Syud in an agony of alarm. "Mercy! mercy!" they cried frantically. "Spare us; we are only poor women earning our bread. There in the fort he threatened us; here we are also terrified. Mercy! mercy! let us go, and we will hasten away."