Yet was it not inevitable that the stroke which laid him low
must wound her on its repercussion? That was the question to which now
she sought an answer. For all her eagerness to speed the corsair to his
doom, she had paused sufficiently to weigh the consequences to herself;
she had not overlooked the circumstance that an inevitable result of this
must be Asad's appropriation of that Frankish slave-girl. But at the
time it had seemed to her that even this price was worth paying to remove
Sakr-el-Bahr definitely and finally from her son's path--which shows
that, after all, Fenzileh the mother was capable of some self-sacrifice.
She comforted herself now with the reflection that the influence, whose
waning she feared might be occasioned by the introduction of a rival into
Asad's hareem, would no longer be so vitally necessary to herself and
Marzak once Sakr-el-Bahr were removed. The rest mattered none so much to
her. Yet it mattered something, and the present state of things left her
uneasy, her mind a cockpit of emotions. Her grasp could not encompass
all her desires at once, it seemed; and whilst she could gloat over the
gratification of one, she must bewail the frustration of another. Yet in
the main she felt that she should account herself the gainer.
In this state of mind she had waited, scarce heeding the savagely joyous
and entirely selfish babblings of her cub, who cared little what might
betide his mother as the price of the removal of that hated rival from
his path.
Pages:
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319