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The feasting in the tente sultane would continue all that night, as on other nights; but Ourïeda and Tahar would be left quietly in the tent of the bridegroom, alone until after dawn, when Tahar would steal away and the girl's women friends would rush in to wish her joy. That would be the hour, Max told himself, when all would be found out, and the chase would begin.
As the caravan wound nearer to watching eyes, another tent, not so big, but new and brilliant of colour, separated itself from the vast bulk of the tente sultane. "What is that?"
All was hurry and confusion in the women's part of the tente sultane, for a great feast was going on which would last through most of the night. The excited servants told Khadra that she must go, and come again to the tent in the morning; but just then the music for a dance of love began, and Khadra begged so hard to stay that she was allowed to stand with the servants.
Every one was astir in the tente sultane, behind the different curtain partitions, and outside were the noises of the douar, waking to a new day. The girl could not wait for the coffee that Fafann would bring her, for she was eager to see the caravan that Si Maïeddine was assembling. As soon as she was ready she stole out into the dim dawn, more mystic in the desert than moon-rise or moon-setting.
Perhaps it was the latter that did it! Another establishment, founded in 1817, was domiciled here, the clients being served by "odalisques en costume oriental, très seduisantes." This is quoted from the advertisements of the day. The café was called the Café des Circassiennes, and there was a sultane, who was the presiding genius of the place.
Theo, upon her low sultane, sat mute with drooped eyes, becoming more silent every moment. Oglethorpe, in regarding her beautiful downcast face, forgot himself also. It was almost half an hour before he remembered he had not made the visit without an object. He had something to say to her something he had once said to her before. He was going away again, and had come to tell her so.
There would have been room and to spare for a dozen such under the tente sultane of the Agha, at his douar south of El Aghouat. As Maïeddine rode up, a buzz of excitement rose in the hive. Some one ran to tell the Kebir that a great Sidi was arriving, and the headman came out from his tent, where he had been meditating or dozing after the chanting of the midday prayer the prayer of noon.
But the viscount read in the "proud humility" of his bow that he had not always waited, a dependent, on the nods of insolent men and ladies of fashion; and, with a good-humored compulsion, he added, "pray oblige me for by that means I shall have an excuse to squeeze into the Sultane, which is so 'happy as to bear the weight of Beaufort!"
When it was evening, the douar feasted, in honour of the guests who had come to the tente sultane. The Agha had given orders that two sheep should be killed. One was for his own household; his relatives, his servants, many of whom lived under the one vast roof of red, and white, and brown.
One of them contained the remains of an old shipmate of mine, Capt. J. Eveleigh, who was mortally wounded when commanding the Astrea, in company with the Creole, during an engagement with two French frigates, the Etoile and Sultane, on the 23rd of January, 1814, off the Cape de Verds. I sailed in the same ship with this officer when I first went to sea.
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