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Politeness, always politeness, with these Arabs of high birth and manners! thought the Irish-French girl in a passionate revolt against the curtain of silk velvet softly let down between her and the secrets of Ben Râana's harem. This time it might be, she said to herself, that politeness covered tragedy. But the same night she received another message from Mabrouka.
This, as it happened, was nearer to Ourïeda's room than Sanda's or even Lella Mabrouka's; and as, during the two days that followed, Zakia was almost constantly occupied in blanching the bride's ivory skin with almond paste, staining her fingers red as coral with a decoction of henna and cochineal, and saturating her hair and body with a famous permanent perfume, sometimes Lella Mabrouka and Taous ventured to leave the two girls chaperoned only by la hennena.
Sanda had said farewell to Lella Mabrouka the night before, that the lady need not wake before her usual hour: but not only did she wake; she rose, very quietly, and saw Embarka tiptoeing along the balcony from Sanda's room to Ourïeda's with the new gandourah and extra thick veil she herself had given the guest to travel in.
But it lasted only for a moment. Then it seemed that by an effort Ourïeda masked herself once more with tragedy. She turned one of her slow, sad glances toward her aunt; and Sanda was sure she looked relieved on seeing Lella Mabrouka absorbed in talk with the plump wife of a caid.
It should be a tonic for a Rose drooping in the garden of her father's harem. "Thou seest for thyself that it is no use to plead," whispered Ourïeda when her father had gone, and Leila Mabrouka and her woman, Taous, on the overhanging balcony, were loudly discussing details of the feast.
He had appeared to Sanda years younger than the widowed Mabrouka; and though she was a dark, withered likeness of him, it was not surprising to learn that Lella Mabrouka was only a half-sister of the Agha, born of an Arab mother. "You know he has had but one wife, my own mother," Ourïeda said proudly.
Now, Aunt Mabrouka and I and our servants are the only women in my father's harem; but when I was a little girl, before my mother died I can just remember her besides my mother herself there was her sister, whose Spanish husband had been drowned at sea. An Arab man thinks it a disgrace if any women related even distantly to him or his wife are thrown on the world to make their own living.
My father sent him to the university in Algiers, because, you see, he was Christian or, rather, he was nothing at all then; he had not settled to any belief. Tahar was like Aunt Mabrouka, very religious, and did not care much to study, except the Koran and a little French. He went once to Paris, but he didn't stay long. He said he was homesick. Oh, he is clever in his way!
When Embarka was out of the way Lella Mabrouka, in her night robe, pattered softly to Sanda's closed door and knocked. No answer. She peeped in and saw the room empty.
Sanda had felt, during the three days, that she was being watched and studied, not only by Lella Mabrouka, but by the girl.
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