"Ay, perhaps!" retorted Lurlee. "I, who am less than a cat in the house, and as gentle as a sheep, am thus treated! O Khan! shame upon thee that I know everything only when it is stale, and comes to me through the bazar! Are not all your goings and comings hidden from me? and now I hear you and Zyna sat up all night together; and I was told you were not to be interrupted, and had to eat my dinner by myself, and to get to sleep as best I might. O Khan! am I less than nobody? I who am of the family of——"
"Thou wouldst only have been anxious and fretful, Lurlee," returned the Khan soothingly. "The planets would have troubled thee. We meant only well in not telling thee. It was an urgent matter, and we could not wait for the astrologer to read the tables for us, or tell us what star was in the ascendant. Go, see after some breakfast, or whatever can be got for Fazil; we may be detained, and I'll warrant he is hungry enough already. We cannot wait for lucky hours sometimes, but must take what Alla sends us."
"I will not go, Khan. I will not be put off with empty words," she cried, angrily; "and if you do not choose to read the stars, what does it signify? are not the consequences of your error on your own head? When was it that the stars were aught in your eyes? Have I not read you many a warning, which, had it been heeded, would have saved much trouble—much! When Fazil went forth to battle, did I not warn you not to let him depart? and did he not come home wounded and senseless? And when I told you one day, when one of the horses died, that something bad must befall us because of the evil aspect of the stars, I was only laughed at. Is this true or false? And yesterday, if I had but been asked beforehand, could I not have told all that was going to happen? Behold!" and the lady drew from her bodice a table regularly constructed to aid her astrological predictions and researches—"behold! were not Saturn and the Moon in conjunction? Is not that bad enough? and cannot you see that is the reason why Bulwunt Rao, poor fellow, has had his head cut off?"
"Peace, Lurlee!" again cried the Khan, to whom his wife's astrological wisdom had long proved a serious annoyance. "If all the planets in the sky had come together for good or evil, Fazil must have gone last night, for it was an errand of life or death. Now all is safely over, go and prepare some sheernee for distribution, and be thankful for what is, rather than anxious about the stars——"
"Toba, toba!" exclaimed the lady, interrupting him; "for shame, for shame! O Khan, to blaspheme the stars! May your sin be forgiven!"
"Nay, mother, but he did not blaspheme," urged the gentle voice of Zyna. "He did but mean that Fazil was safe everywhere; for thou knowest, dear mother, that he is in the hands of Alla, and that the blessed Alla is above all."
"He is not above the stars," retorted the lady angrily, and over-anxious to establish the truth of her favourite superstition—"that is, He—I mean—He is above them; but then——"
"Ah, Lurlee; better leave them alone," cried the Khan, laughing. "Art thou not sinking deep into the mire of thine own conceit, lady? Well, thou art welcome to them if they will teach thee not to be wilful, and not to do thine own desire, which is ever ill controlled and variable; and as to their being higher than Him who made them—why, I have no more to say."
"I said no such thing," retorted the lady doggedly; "but it is ever thus. Take care, Khan, of wilful disregard of warnings."