Hence her desperate, reckless courage to stand thus before him now, for
although her face was veiled there was hardy arrogance in every line of
her figure. Of his scowl she took no slightest heed.
"If this be the slave fetched by Sakr-el-Bahr from England, then rumour
has lied to me," she said. "I vow it was scarce worth so long a voyage
and the endangering so many valuable Muslim lives to fetch this
yellow-faced, long-shanked daughter of perdition into Barbary.
Asad's surprise beat down his anger. He was not subtle.
"Yellow-faced? Long-shanked?" quoth he. Then reading Fenzileh at last,
he displayed a slow, crooked smile. "Already have I observed thee to
grow hard of hearing, and now thy sight is failing too, it seems.
Assuredly thou art growing old." And he looked her over with such an
eye of displeasure that she recoiled.
He stepped close up to her. "Too long already hast thou queened it in
my hareem with thine infidel, Frankish ways," he muttered, so that none
but those immediately about overheard his angry words. "Thou art become
a very scandal in the eyes of the Faithful," he added very grimly. "It
were well, perhaps, that we amended that."
Abruptly then he turned away, and by a gesture he ordered Ali to return
the slave to her place among the others. Leaning on the arm of Tsamanni
he took some steps towards the entrance, then halted, and turned again
to Fenzileh:
"To thy litter," he bade her peremptorily, rebuking her thus before all,
"and get thee to the house as becomes a seemly Muslim woman.
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