After some inarticulate words the negress said, “Who can tell?”
“Thyself,” replied Baïla, “thou knowest more than thou hast told me.”
“I avow,” added Mariam, after a little hesitation, “that one of the delhis, who witnessed the affair, said in my presence, that the fugitive appeared to have a very white complexion for an Asiatic.”
“Thou seest it all well, Mariam,” said Baïla, carelessly, still playing with the fan she held in her hand.
“If it is so,” replied the negress, “I am sorry for the fate of the poor young Christian; but we at least are out of the reach of danger in consequence of it, and I can now sleep, for, since his double apparition in the garden, I have but half closed my eyes. I feared constantly some imprudence on your part or his.”
“Faint-hearted;” and Mariam assisted Baïla in arranging her toilet for the night.
Soon after daylight the Mingrelian left her solitary couch, for Djezzar fatigued by the chase had also slept alone, woke her old negress, and both descended into the gardens. Baïla gave as a pretext for her walk, her desire to breathe the fresh air of the gardens.
She went first to the kiosk, then to the plateau, on which she had formerly seated herself; she cast a glance around her on the masses of flowers and shrubs, upon the small marble basin, and fixed for some time an attentive look upon the two palm-trees, as if some one was about to appear between their columns, under their green canopy. She went then to the spot where the Azalea covered with its shade and its flowers the last trace of the stranger; she broke off one of the branches, stripped it of its foliage, broke it into two, fastened together the pieces in the form of a cross, by means of a cord taken from a pelisse which she wore; she then set up this cross upon the foot-print, which was almost effaced. All this was done without any affectation of sentiment, and with a calm and almost listless air.
At the sight of the cross, Mariam, who was born a Christian in Abyssinia, signed herself, after having first cast a cautious glance around her. Baïla contented herself with breathing a sigh, the sigh of a child who sees a game on which it has been for some time engaged, finished. She then returned to the isolated pavilion, in which her suite of apartments was situated, with her head bent down and pensive, but thinking, perhaps, of any thing else than the stranger.
From that moment, however, cross and fantastic with Djezzar, she had no longer for him those soft caresses, nor those melodious songs, nor those intoxicating dances which accompanied the clicking noise of her castinets, and appeared to open the gates of the seventh heaven. She finished by irritating him so much by her redoubled whims, caprices, and refusals, that he left her in a fury, and remained for three whole days without wishing to speak to her. On the third day, the attendants came to him to inform him that a terrible noise was heard in the apartments of the favorite, the cries of a woman mingled with the roarings of the lion.