But first
suffer me to remove thy haick, that the eyes of Lella M'Barka may be
refreshed by thy beauty."
She would have unfastened the long drapery, but Hsina put down
Victoria's luggage, and pushing away the two brown hands, tattooed with
blue mittens, she herself unfastened the veil. "No, this is _my_ lady,
and my work, Fafann," she objected.
"But it is my duty to take her in," replied the Bedouin woman,
jealously. "It is the wish of Lella M'Barka. Go thou and make ready the
room of the guest."
Hsina flounced away across the court, and Fafann held open both the door
and the curtains. Victoria obeyed her gesture and went into the room
beyond. It was long and narrow, with a ceiling of carved wood painted in
colours which had once been violent, but were now faded. The walls were
partly covered with hangings like the curtains that shaded the glass
door; but, on one side, between gold-embroidered crimson draperies, were
windows, and in the white stucco above, showed lace-like openings,
patterned to represent peacocks, the tails jewelled with glass of
different colours. On the opposite side opened doors of dark wood inlaid
with mother-o'-pearl; and these stood ajar, revealing rows of shelves
littered with little gilded bottles, or piled with beautiful brocades
that were shot with gold in the pink light of an Arab lamp.
There was little furniture; only a few low, round tables, or maidas,
completely overlaid with the snow of mother-o'-pearl; two or three
tabourets of the same material, and, at one end of the room a low divan,
where something white and orange-yellow and purple lay half buried in
cushions.
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