"I will speak," she cried. "This young man is worthy of my confidence, and you know it, Linn. If my father had wished me to go with Said Ali Mohammed, the slave prince, he would not have committed me to you. No, he would have sent me to nibble sweetmeats among the women behind the veil. But I am not a woman of the harem. I am free and French. Obey I shall not. I would rather die!"
She suddenly threw off a slipper, reached out a bare brown foot exquisitely moulded, deftly picked up a letter from the floor with her toes, and handed it to me. It was in Arabic, and at the sight of the characters I shook my head.
"My father could read it, but not I," I said mournfully, wishing that I had spent less time on Greek and Latin at the Lycée St. André.
"Then you must learn—you must—I shall teach you to speak, and your father shall drill you in the verbs. Listen, Aügoos Cawdori, I am not, save in love and in the kindness which not even my life could repay, the daughter of these best and dearest folk in the world. No, parents are not so kind as Keller and Linn. They are more selfish, though God forbid that I should speak so of my father. He was, ever since I can remember, a prisoner of war—even the great Emir Abd-el-Kader himself. I am the daughter of his one Queen, his first wife—no child of the 'Smala,' but a princess, the daughter of a princess. Abd-el-Kader, thinking himself near his end, committed me to the care of his old officer and his wife, instructing them that in all things I should be brought up as a maiden of the Franks. This they have done. You Linn, and you Keller, have kept watch about me day and night. The God who is the God of Jesus and of Mahomet reward you, as surely he will. I am a European girl in that which I have learned. I have chosen a profession in which I can be happy, here in this little town among the hills, till I seek larger fields and try my fate in other cities."
She paused in her tale and smiled. The tears were falling steadily down Linn's face, and she seemed suddenly to have aged a quarter of a century. But Keller Bey, no longer restless, stood stiffly at attention as if he had been listening to the commands of his master, the great Emir. Alida looked from one to the other. Then lightly as a cat leaping from the floor to a window-sill, she sprang to her feet and embraced them tenderly.
"I am your true daughter always. Do not forget it. I owe everything to you, and I shall never quit you if you will let me stay."
She sat down again, and taking her letter, she began:
"This is from my father, Abd-el-Kader, presently living at Brousse in Syria on the road to Damascus. He is old, he says, and he desires to see me about him in his latter days. All is good in Syria. The water of Brousse is sweet, and the French Government gives him much money. He has found a husband for me, a prince royal of Egypt, though not of Arab race. Sidi ben Mohammed is his name, the man whom he sends with a letter that I may see him, upon receipt of which his servant Keller Bey and his wife will hasten to bring me to Brousse under the protection and escort of this Prince of Egypt. Upon my arrival the solemn rites shall be observed, and I shall be the first wife of Ali Mohammed the Prince, a worthy man and one of great power in his own country.
"So it is written, and my father signs and seals, but whether it was written for him or by him, I cannot tell. At any rate he has made his signature with the flourish which none can mistake, and an order is an order. What say you, Aügoos Cawdori? Must I obey, and become the chief wife of this coffee-coloured fellah, no Arab of my father's race, say the Egyptians what they will?"
Alida sat among the scatter of cushions regarding me fixedly.