“Thou has cost me dear, thou daughter of Spain,” said he. “But I am content. Come.” And he made shift to lead her away. Suddenly, however, fierce as a tiger-cat she writhed her arms upwards and clawed at his face. With a scream of pain he relaxed his hold of her and in that moment, quick as lightning she plucked the dagger that hung from his girdle so temptingly within her reach.
“Valga me Dios!” she cried, and ere a hand could be raised to prevent her she had buried the blade in her lovely breast and sank in a laughing, coughing, heap at his feet. A final convulsive heave and she lay there quite still, whilst Ibrahim glared down at her with eyes of dismay, and over all the market there hung a hush of sudden awe.
Rosamund had risen in her place, and a faint colour came to warm her pallor, a faint light kindled in her eyes. God had shown her the way through this poor Spanish girl, and assuredly God would give her the means to take it when her own turn came. She felt herself suddenly uplifted and enheartened. Death was a sharp, swift severing, an easy door of escape from the horror that threatened her, and God in His mercy, she knew, would justify self-murder under such circumstances as were her own and that poor dead Andalusian maid’s.
At length Ibrahim roused himself from his momentary stupor. He stepped deliberately across the body, his face inflamed, and stood to beard the impassive dalal.
“She is dead!” he bleated. “I am defrauded. Give me back my gold!”
“Are we to give back the price of every slave that dies?” the dalal questioned him.
“But she was not yet delivered to me,” raved the Jew. “My hands had not touched her. Give me back my gold.”
“Thou liest, son of a dog,” was the answer, dispassionately delivered. “She was thine already. I had so pronounced her. Bear her hence, since she belongs to thee.”
The Jew, his face empurpling, seemed to fight for breath
“How?” he choked. “Am I to lose a hundred philips?”