“What does it mean?” demanded Maie, stamping her small foot in passion. “Tell me at once, my father—what does it mean?”
The vizier sat doubled up in his chair a picture of abject2 humiliation3 and despair. His chin lay inert4 against his chest; the white beard streamed to his waist, where long and bony fingers clutched it and dragged at the meshes5 nervously6; his eyes refused to meet the glowing orbs7 his incensed8 daughter turned upon him like searchlights baring the soul.
“Will you speak?” she asked, scornfully. “Will you speak, most sublime10 and magnificent Vizier—if only to proclaim yourself an ass1?”
“Have peace—have peace!” muttered Agahr, moving uneasily. “How was I to know that Merad the Persian would return?”
“Oh trusting and childlike servant—thou one innocent in all the world of guile11!”
“Ahmed tells no one of his plans,” the vizier went on, heedless of her jibes12; “nor can I be expected to probe the secret thoughts of the Khan. When Merad departed there was no hint of his mission or that he expected soon to return. My spy waits in Ahmed’s private chamber13; my spy serves his every meal; my spy listens to the secret conferences he holds with sirdars and officers of the household. If the Khan sneezes, I know it; if he stirs abroad my eyes follow his every step. But his thoughts, being known only to himself and to Allah, baffle my efforts, and the jargon14 he speaks to the foreign physician is a language none else can understand.”
Maie clutched at her silken scarf and rent its folds in twain, twisting and tearing the tender fabric15 until its threads lay scattered16 in all directions.
“I hate him! I have hated him from the first,” she said. “Aye, even as I clasped his clammy form in my arms, and knew that water rather than blood flowed in his veins17, I loathed18 the man and guessed he would strive to ruin me!”
“You did this?” asked the vizier, sternly. “You clasped the Persian in your arms—a man so old that he might call you daughter? You played the wanton with this stranger?”
“Even so,” she answered, mockingly. “I would have sacrificed anything, at that time, to have cut old Burah’s thread of life. But, elai! your cold Persian would not respond. He spurned19 me from him. I was very safe in his presence, my father.”
Agahr’s brows did not unbend. He eyed his daughter with a look of smouldering fury.
“Hear me, Maie,” he commanded; “you are the child of my heart, my best beloved. With you I have plotted and intrigued20 until my very soul is stained with evil in the Prophet’s sight; but all for your future glory and pride, and with no thought of my own advantage. But if you disregard your own purity, if I find that you give yourself to strange men or humble21 me in the sight of Allah, I swear to kill you as quickly as I would a dog of an infidel! Aye, my own slaves shall cut you down like a noxious22 weed.”
She laughed then, showing her dimples and her pearl-like teeth; but the laugh rang hard in Agahr’s ears.
“What man has knowledge to teach a woman?” she asked, with a careless gesture. “Is your wisdom so little, my father, that you judge me lacking in worldly cunning? Bah! have comfort, then! Never can you plot so well for Maie as Maie can plot for herself. And when I fall the heavens shall follow in my wake. Enough of this. We face a real trouble. The Persian has returned to Mekran, bearing in a splendid palanquin a woman veiled and closely guarded, who is received into the harem of the khan after he had embraced her form in the sight of many servants. In this we read my own rejection23, the failure of all our clever plotting. The harem, then, was not made beautiful for me, but for this strange woman whom the Persian brings to warm{210} the cold heart of Ahmed Khan. Is she beautiful? Is she young and winning? Has she charms to delight the senses? Then why should she be chosen before me—the daughter you yourself have declared to be incomparable? Answer, you man of............