The other women, breathlessly interested, gathered round while Jehanara interpreted the answer to the girl, who sat up with streaming eyes, and poured forth a succession of fierce, abrupt sentences.
“She says, Miss North, ‘I am Zeynab, called Rose of the World, daughter of Fath-ud-Din, the King of Ethiopia’s Grand Vizier, and the fair-haired woman’—that’s you, Miss North—‘has stolen from me the heart of Bahram Khan, my lord. She has beguiled him to cast me off—me, Fath-ud-Din’s daughter—that she may have his house to herself, and now she comes to mock me. But let her beware. The witch Khadija was not my nurse for nothing, and if poison can disfigure, or steel kill, or fire burn, she shall pay every anna that she owes me.’ Don’t you go and take it to heart, Miss North; she’s a poor, wild, uneducated creature, not brought up like us.”
“But she must be mad!” cried Mabel. “Tell her she is making some extraordinary mistake; that I wouldn’t touch her husband with a pair of tongs—that I hate the very sight of him. Tell her that nothing would make me marry him if he was free, that my religion would forbid it; and as he is married already, our law forbids it. Tell her that even if I wanted to marry him, my brother would see me dead first—that I would beg him to kill me before I stooped to such degradation.”
Even Jehanara cringed before Mabel in her crimson indignation, and translated her words without comment. The women looked at one another doubtfully, and the Moti-ul-Nissa frowned. The forsaken wife spoke again in bitter disdain—
“It is a fine thing to talk thus, when the fair-haired woman has robbed me of my lord’s heart for ever. Since she cares so little for it, why did she not leave it with Zeynab?”
“For anything that I have done, it is hers still,” said Mabel desperately. “Ask my sister, the doctor lady, if it is not so. You know her, all of you.”
“Ah, woe is me!” cried Zeynab. “Why did not the doctor lady leave me to die as a little child, rather than save me by her art that misery might come upon me through one of her own house?”
“Peace, girl!” said the Moti-ul-Nissa. “The doctor lady knows not yet that thou art my son’s wife. It is not through her that this trouble has come. I will send a message to her, that she may tell us what to do. If the words of her sister here are true words—” she broke off and looked keenly at Mabel—“it may be that she is one of those that ensnare men even without their own will; but such women ought not to place themselves where men are forced to behold them.”
Mabel digested the rebuke, translated with startling plainness by Jehanara, as well as she might. “I am very sorry,” she said in a low voice. “My brother said just the same to me, but I have only been here a short time, and I didn’t understand things. Please forgive me,” she added, looking first at Zeynab and then at her mother-in-law. “I never dreamed that such a thing could happen, and I will take care that it never does again.”
“Never again is too late for me,” said Zeynab bitterly.