d his alarm at what
he had learnt, Ayoub rolled into the presence of his mistress with that
evil message.

She listened to him in a dumb white fury. Then she fell to reviling
her lord and the slave-girl in a breath, and called upon Allah to break
their bones and blacken their faces and rot their flesh with all the
fervour of one born and bred in the True Faith. When she recovered from
that burst of fury it was to sit brooding awhile. At length she sprang
up and bade Ayoub see that none lurked to listen about the doorways.

"We must act, Ayoub, and act swiftly, or I am destroyed and with me
will be destroyed Marzak, who alone could not stand against his father's
face. Sakr-el-Bahr will trample us into the dust." She checked on a
sudden thought. "By Allah it may have been a part of his design to have
brought hither that white-faced wench. But we must thwart him and we
must thwart Asad, or thou art ruined too, Ayoub."

"Thwart him?" quoth her wazeer, gaping at the swift energy of mind and
body with which this woman was endowed, the like of which he had never
seen in any woman yet. "Thwart him?" he repeated.

"First, Ayoub, to place this Frankish girl beyond his reach."

"That is well thought--but how?"

"How? Can thy wit suggest no way? Hast thou wits at all in that fat head
of thine? Thou shalt outbid Tsamanni, or, better still, set someone else
to do it for thee, and so buy the girl for me. Then we'll contrive that
she shall vanish quietly and quickly before Asad can discover a trace of
her."

His face blanched, and the wattles about his jaws were shaking. "And...
and the cost? Hast thou counted the cost, O Fenzileh? What will happen
when Asad gains knowledge of this thing?"

"He shall gain no knowledge of it," she answered him. "Or if he does,
the girl being gone beyond recall, he shall submit him to what was
written. Trust me to know how to bring him to it."

"Lady, lady!" he cried, and wrung his bunches of fat fingers. "I dare
not engage in this!"

"Engage in what? If I bid thee go buy this girl, and give thee the money
thou'lt require, what else concerns thee, dog? What else is to be done,
a man shall do. Come now, thou shalt have the money, all I have, which
is a matter of some fifteen hundred philips, and what is not laid out
upon this purchase thou shalt retain for thyself."

He considered an instant, and conceived that she was right. None could
blame him for executing the commands she gave him. And t