"Take him to his house," said Fazil, "and keep him there till he is wanted. Go with them, Rama," he continued to the man, "and be ready when I send for thee. I will answer to the Kótwal for the night's events."
"That is all I wanted," he replied. "My lord is very kind and merciful."
"Not yet. I have much to ask and much to hear. If thou canst speak the truth, well for thee; if not, beware!"
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
How slowly and wearily night passes when a sense of impending evil overpowers sleep, and renders every faculty sharply sensible to sounds and impressions otherwise of ordinary occurrence,—when a thousand vague phantasies flit before the imagination hardly more definite than the keenly-painful thoughts they awaken! How difficult thus to endure delay or uncertainty, and to account for causes of either, so as to gain consolation or assurance to one's self, far less to impart comfort to others whose fears and apprehensions are perhaps greater than our own.
Thus heavily was hour after hour counted by Afzool Khan and his fair daughter in the apartment we have already described. The Khan busied himself, or seemed to do so, with a pile of Persian papers, on some of which, from time to time, he made notes: but it was easy for his daughter to see that his eye often followed vacantly the lines of the writing, and that his thoughts wandered far from the subjects before him.
The Khan's wife, Lurlee, had come, and been dismissed with an injunction not to interrupt him, and that he should be late. Zyna did not disturb her father, and found a partial occupation in some embroidery, which helped to dispel for a time her fears for her brother; gradually, however, as the night wore on, it was easy for her to see that her father's anxiety increased. It was true that Fazil's return was not expected till after midnight; but that, under the thought of his perilous errand, brought no consolation with it, and she sat watching the expression of her father's countenance, yet not so as to be observed, and withdrawing her eyes when he looked up. A few careless words fell from time to time from both, and a few entreaties by the Khan to his daughter that she would take rest, were met by requests that she might be allowed to share his watch, for that she had promised her brother to await his return.
Thus midnight came, and with it sleep to the young girl, that would not be denied. She had folded her scarf about her person, and lay down where she was; and her father now watched his sleeping child, almost wondering at her beauty, as the light fell upon her, and projected a shadow from the long eyelashes upon her soft downy cheek. So, with the image of the dead before him—for he remembered her mother even such an one as her child—Afzool Khan's thoughts wandered far back into the past,—far back to the time when, with life before him and easy competence, the servant of a noble and united kingdom, the future had not concerned him, save only to wish that the happiness he possessed might endure.