“Well,” said Cecil, with a half-hearted attempt to turn the affair into a joke, “if we must choose between being starved and poisoned, Um Yusuf, I think the poisoning would be less painful in the end. It would certainly be quicker.”
Um Yusuf gave a contemptuous sniff at her mistress’s flippancy, and they waited in silence, until there was a sound of hurrying footsteps in the passage. Then the curtain was pulled aside, and Azim Bey darted in, radiant with smiles, while behind him appeared the faithful Masûd, grinning from ear to ear.
“Oh, mademoiselle, my dear mademoiselle!” cried the boy, rushing to kiss Cecil’s hand. “They have brought you back at last, then? But you have been ill—they have ill-treated you? Ah! they shall pay for it. But all is right now.”
“Not all, Bey,” said Cecil, grieved that he should so soon have forgotten the tragedy of the Kurdish hills, but he was too much excited to listen.
“Come, mademoiselle, don’t stay in this wretched place. You will trust yourself in the kajavahs once more, if I ride by the side of the mule? There is a ridiculous formality to go through, and I want to get it over. My grandmother has promised you in marriage to a certain man, and he will not accept his dismissal from any lips but your own. That will not take long to do, will it, mademoiselle?”
“Certainly not,” said Cecil, astonished at this sudden development of affairs, and smiling down at her pupil as he led her out. But at the door he stopped and looked her over with a dissatisfied face.
“Mademoiselle, your clothes are so old, so dusty. Have they taken away your other dresses?”
“I really have nothing but what I have on,” said Cecil, lightly. “Our luggage seems to have gone astray. It doesn’t signify much, though, does it?”
“But it does, mademoiselle,” returned Azim Bey, with deep seriousness. “I cannot bear that this man should see you so poorly dressed. You have to speak to him, you know.”
“Well,” said Cecil, “the Um-ul-Pasha sent me a dress this morning which I refused to touch. If you like, I will put it on, though it scarcely seems fair to wear the dress she meant for a wedding to refuse the bridegroom in. What do you think?”