“It is told me the Farangi ladies are like the Turki women north of the mountains, who ride unveiled with their lords—even to war,” she said, and Eveleen followed the words anxiously and painfully. “But how is it this Farangi Sahib was not slain?”
“He was sick—not wounded in battle,” explained Eveleen. “I was taking him to the sea to heal him, for the sea heals all the ills of the English.”
This was quite comprehensible. “Naturally, since they come up out of it,” said the Khanum graciously.
“And we were betrayed into the hands of the Khan’s servants and brought here,” Eveleen ended rather lamely, and the benevolence became less marked.
“My son does not make war with sick men and with women. Why should ye have been brought hither?”
“They said——” Eveleen tried hard to put the story of the Seal of Solomon into manageable Persian, but found the task beyond her powers. “It was all a piece of foolishness,” she said unhappily.
“What was foolish? the tale of the precious thing—dear to my son and his whole house—the colour of which has passed into thine eyes? Why say this now, when by thy malediction upon what should have caused good fortune, thou hast brought so much evil upon my son and all the brotherhood?”
“Ah, but it couldn’t really——” Eveleen was beginning, and then realised that no amount of argument, even if she were equal to it, would disabuse the ladies’ minds of their belief either in her power or in that of the stone. “I was angry,” she confessed. “My husband gave the talisman to the Khan without consulting me.”
“And it was thine own possession?” asked the Khanum, with evident sympathy.
“My very own—given to me when I was married by the uncle who brought me up.” There was quite a chorus of sympathy now, but Jamal-ud-din’s mother struck a jarring note.