“He will not seek a quarrel with you,” said Delì Pasha, smiling at Hassan’s simplicity. “Have you heard of calumny and slander? Have you heard of poison in a cup of coffee? Have you heard of stabbing in the dark? These are the weapons that great men in Egypt use when they wish to get rid of one whom they hate.”
“I fear him not,” repeated Hassan with the same frank boldness. “My life is in the hand of Allah, and neither Osman Bey nor any other man can take it until the predestined day arrives. Let him try his treacherous schemes if he will, he may perhaps learn the truth of our Arabic proverb, ‘He dug a pit for his neighbour, and he fell into it himself.’”
While this conversation was going on between Delì Pasha and Hassan, Amina was sitting in her upper room, to which her slaves had just brought up a tray covered with sweetmeats and fruits. Mansour, the old eunuch, followed, bearing a cool sherbet of pomegranate. The younger slaves being ordered to retire, there remained only with Amina, Mansour and her governess, Fatimeh Khanum, both of whom had witnessed the jereed play—the eunuch from the front building, and the elder lady from another window in the harem, for Amina had not made the latter the confidant of her secret visits to the lattice in the boudoir. With well-assumed indifference Amina asked Fatimeh Khanum and Mansour to relate all the particulars of the games, which she had followed with an eye a thousand times more eager than theirs.
Hassan was a great favourite with them both, and as they expatiated on his noble figure, his grace and skill in the use of the jereed, and his unequalled horsemanship, Amina’s blushes mantled on her cheeks and overspread her neck. Not satisfied with hearing the praises of Hassan from the lips of her attendants, she wished to hear them also from those of her father, and after Mansour had retired to the other wing of the harem, she said to Fatimeh Khanum—
“Fatimeh, I have a great desire to see my father this evening, and to hear from him all about those Franks who were his visitors to-day. Go to him and ask him if he will take supper with his little Amina. I will have prepared for him all the dishes that he best likes.”
Fatimeh, who could never refuse anything to her beloved pupil, and who, from her mature age and position in the harem, was always permitted by the Pasha to come to him in his outer apartments through the private door of communication whenever she had any message from his daughter, willingly undertook this commission. After passing the eunuchs at the curtained door, she proceeded along the narrow passage which led towards the room usually occupied by Delì Pasha, but before reaching it she had to pass through an anteroom, in which, to her surprise, she found Hassan walking up and down alone. She was about to withdraw, when he came forward and said to her, “Lady, do not retire on my account. You were going to seek our Pasha; he will soon be disengaged. A visitor, a Bey whose name I did not hear, has just called, and has something for the Pasha’s private ear. His Highness ordered all the other attendants into the outer hall, and told me to remain here.”
Fatimeh Khanum knew that she ought to retire, but there was something in Hassan’s voice and appearance which detained her in spite of herself. “Am I mad? Am I under sorcery? What is there that draws me to this youth by unknown cords?”
Such were the thoughts which followed each other through Fatimeh’s troubled brain, when her eye happened to fall upon Hassan’s wounded cheek, on which a patch of blood was visible. A woman’s instincts impelled her at once to exclaim—
“Allah! Allah! you are wounded. Why has no one stopped or washed away the blood?” And without waiting for his permission, she caught up one of the porous jugs of water found in almost every Egyptian room and drew near to Hassan.
“It is nothing, my aunt,” said Hassan, calling her by the name of affectionate respect given by the Arabs to elderly ladies; “but I will submit to your kind surgery.”