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Page 49
He lay terror-stricken for some long time, then slowly got to his
knees, tore off the fine feathers and flung the scimitar into a far
corner; then, naked save for the loin-cloth, sat down with his back to
the straw and pulled at his curly oiled hair, a sure sign in him of
deep thought.
Then he grinned and, rising, walked across the floor, and, sitting down
again, pulled the woman from under the straw.
No! Zulannah was not dead, nor even fatally hurt, but she was horrible
to look upon when the Ethiopian had washed her clean by means of a
handful of straw dipped in a broken pitcher of water.
The dog's great fangs had driven behind the ear, severing the mastoid
nerve so that the mouth was pulled right up the left side of the face;
it had also injured the muscle controlling the eyelid, causing it to
droop and giving a diabolical leer to the once beautiful doe-like eye;
it had also injured the muscle of the neck so that the head was
slightly twisted; but, worst of all, the other dog had driven its
terrible fangs into the muscle above the knees, injuring it so that she
would never walk straight again.
And Qatim sat back on his haunches, and laughed, clapping his enormous
hands.
She was not dead, and her hands were not injured, but she was too
hideous to show herself unveiled and too twisted to be recognised in
the street.
So all that was left to him to do was to cure her injuries--which he
did, and quickly, under the advice of an old herbalist in the Silk
Market,--and then sit down for the rest of his life whilst she drew
strange little marks on those pale pink leaves.
CHAPTER XVI
"_My faint spirit was sitting in the light
Of thy looks, my love;
It panted for thee like the hind at noon
For the brooks, my love_."
SHELLEY.
For some inexplicable reason, the little old lady's trust in Jill's son
was unshakable. Why, she could not have well explained. It might have
been because of his ability to hide his hurt or the memory of his words
spoken as the fortune-teller on the night of the ball, or perhaps
through his self-denial in refraining from using his mother's erstwhile
friendship with the old aristocrat, as a key to the door which was
locked fast between himself and the girl he loved.
After all, such marriages _had_ taken place, thousands of them, so why
should not his with the beautiful girl be added to the list, the
outcome thereof proving the proverbial exception to the inevitable
disastrous ending of all such unions?
Why did he deny himself?
Just because he loved the girl with the same all-sacrificing love his
white mother had given his Arabian father.
If it had been otherwise, with never a second thought he would have
lifted the girl, as doubtlessly his ancestors had oft-times lifted
women in their _gazus_ or raids, and left the consequences in the hands
of that old beldame Fate.
So it had been decided to start the day after the morrow by private and
swiftest steam-boat to Luxor, where Damaris, shepherded by Jane Coop
and under the social wing of Lady Thistleton, would sojourn at the
Winter Palace Hotel until such time as her godmother should see fit to
return from her errand of mercy to the House 'an Mahabbha in the Oasis
of Khargegh.
Thus, whilst Jane Coop slept placidly and Maria Hobson wrestled under
the bed-covering in the last throes of a nightmare in which, as a
camel, she packed parcels of sand wrapped in tissue-paper, in trunks
which stretched across an endless desert, Damaris drove out to the
Obelisk for her last ride on the stallion Sooltan.
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