Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 1, 2025
Victoria was not sleepy, though she had lain awake thinking excitedly all night; but Lella M'Barka bade her rest, as the day would be tiring. No one talked, and presently Fafann began to snore. The girl's eyes met Si Maïeddine's, and they smiled at each other. This made him seem to her more like an ordinary human being than he had seemed before.
Sanda said nothing at all, knowing that she would but make matters worse by speaking. But if she had had the slightest hope that Lella Mabrouka might be deceived by Ourïeda's plausible excuse, the cold glint of black eyes staring at her in the lamplight would have stabbed it to death.
The custom of the house was for the three ladies to take their meals together in a room where occasionally, as a great honour, the Agha dined with them. That evening a tray of food was brought to Sanda with polite regrets from Lella Mabrouka because she and her niece were too indisposed by the hot weather to forsake the shelter of their rooms.
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.
They had come to the court of the mosque, which had on one side an entrance to the private house of the marabout, the great Sidi El Hadj Mohammed ben Abd-el-Kader. "Lella Saïda, oh light of the young moon, if it please thee, thou hast two guests come from very far off," announced an old negress to the woman who had been looking out over the golden silence of the desert.
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.
"Pardon, lady, I am Hsina, the servant of Lella M'Barka Bent Djellab, sent to wait upon thee," spoke a soft and guttural voice, in Arabic. "Blessings be upon thee!" "And upon thee blessings," Victoria responded in the Arab fashion which she had learned while many miles of land and sea lay between her and the country of Islam. "I was told to expect thee."
That Lella Mabrouka and Sanda would be there was a matter of course; and, besides them, there were the wives and daughters of two or three sheikhs and caids, all of whom Sanda already knew by sight, as they had paid ceremonious visits to the great man's harem since her arrival at Djazerta.
These men, riding alone, saluted Si Maïeddine almost with reverence, and Lella M'Barka told Victoria, with pride, that her cousin was immensely respected by the French Government. He had done much for France in the far south, where his family influence was great, and he had adjusted difficulties between the desert men and their rulers.
But the girl's great eyes were fixed and introspective. When Sanda was sure that Lella Mabrouka and Taous, her spy, were both intent on the figure posturing in the cleared space in the centre of the room, she cautiously unfolded the ball of paper. Holding it on her lap, half hidden by the frame of her hands, she saw a fine, clear black writing, a writing new to her.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking