"Salaam, be seated," murmured Saidie, indicating a fauteuil near the one on which she sank herself.
Mrs. Hamilton came forward, her hands closing and unclosing spasmodically in their grey silk gloves, and sat down again, her eyes riveted on the other's face.
"Do you know who I am?" she said at last in a stifled voice.
Saidie smiled faintly; one of those liquid, lingering smiles that made Hamilton's heaven.
"Yes, I know; you are Mem Sahib Hamilton, the first, the old wife.".
Saidie, according to her own Eastern ideas, was in the position of a superior receiving an unfortunate inferior. She was the latest acquired—the darling, the reigning queen—confronted with the poor cast-off, old, unattractive first wife; and being of a nature equally noble as the type of her beauty, she felt it incumbent on her, in such a situation, to treat the unfortunate with every consideration, gentleness, and tenderness.
The British matron's views of the relative positions of first and subsequent wives differs, however, from Saidie's, and Mrs. Hamilton's face grew purple as she heard Saidie's answer, and some faint comprehension of Saidie's view was borne in upon her.
"Where is my husband?" she demanded fiercely.
"The Sahib is in the city to-day," returned Saidie calmly. How odious they were, these Englishwomen, with their short skirts and big boots, and red, hot faces, with great black straw houses over them, and their curt manners, and the impertinent way they spoke of their lords!
"When will he be back?" pursued the other, sharply.